Tim Seifert breaks down while sharing his COVID-19 experience
Tim Seifert was one of the players, who contracted the COVID-19 during the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). After the BCCI suspended the tournament, Seifert couldn’t return to New Zealand as he failed both of his pre-departure RT-PCR tests and showed moderate symptoms. Even as the rest of his national teammates returned home, Seifert stayed back in India.
The Black Caps’ cricketer mentioned that getting the results confirmed was the toughest part. While he was sharing his experience, Seifert lost his composure and broke down into tears. The other journalists, in the press conference, gave him time to recollect himself and lent their helping hand.
Tim Seifert narrates
“The Chennai Super Kings manager showed me the positive on the top of the test. The world stops and I just couldn’t really think what was next and that was the scariest part of it – you hear about the bad things and I thought that was going to happen to me,” Seifert was quoted as saying, reported by 1 News.
Seifert is currently undergoing his mandatory 14-day quarantine period after recovering and returning to his home country last week. The 26-year-old stated how Brendon McCullum and Stephen Fleming helping him through the difficult phase.
“They made everything a lot easier. They made sure that things would be put in place and the CSK management and CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders [the team Seifert played for], made life easy for me to know that everything would be alright and when that time was to come home, they’d try everything to get me home safely,” he stated.
Seifert was a part of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), but he didn’t get a chance to play as his team preferred Dinesh Karthik as the specialist keeper.
He said one of the biggest positives that helped him through the tough times was that he was getting married in a couple of months. “My fiancée was quite happy I’m back a bit earlier so I can help with all the planning,” Seifert added.
In his career for the Kiwis, Seifert has played three ODIs and 35 T20Is in which he managed 33 and 695 runs respectively with five half-centuries.
