Former India Opener Chetan Chauhan Passes Away
Updated - 16 Aug 2020, 08:19 PM
Former India opener Chetan Chauhan has passed away aged 73 on Sunday. The former cricketer-turned-politician was suffering from kidney ailment and had tested positive for coronavirus in July. His health had deteriorated after he contracted the deadly virus.
Chetan Chauhan, who was a minister in Yogi Adityanath’s cabinet in Uttar Pradesh, recently suffered from kidney failure and was put on the ventilator at the Medanta hospital in Gurugram. He was originally admitted to the Sanjay Gandhi PGI hospital in Lucknow when he tested positive for the virus last month but was later shifted to the Medanta.
And while he was yet to recover from coronavirus, he developed kidney and blood pressure problems on Friday. As a result, doctors took the call to put him on life support. However, Chetan Chauhan lost the fight on Sunday as he breathed his last.
Chetan Chauhan is the first high profile person in Indian cricket to have succumbed to the coronavirus. A number of cricketers from other nations had tested positive for the deadly virus too. In June, former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi was tested positive for the virus as well. He became the third cricketer from Pakistan, and the second international after former opener Taufeeq Umar, to have contracted the virus. Zafar Sarfraz, the former first-class cricketer who died of the disease, was the first.
In May, Solo Nqweni, the South African allrounder who has been battling Guillan-Barré syndrom, had also confirmed he was tested positive for Covid-19. Bangladesh star Mashrafe Mortaza had contracted the virus too along with some other cricketers from his nation.
Cricket career:
After making his debut for Team India in 1969, Chauhan went on to play in 40 Tests and 7 ODIS. He is best known for being legendary Sunil Gavaskar’s longest serving opening partner. In Tests, he scored 2,084 runs at an average of 31 while in the ODIs he could only manage to score 157 runs.
He and Gavaskar formed one of India’s most successful opening partnerships in Tests as the due scored over 3,000 runs together. Chetan Chauhan played first-class cricket for Maharashtra and Delhi and was honoured with the Arjuna Award in 1981.
