IPL 2021 | 'Rather you should have been dead,' Varun Chakravarthy opens up social media abuse

Kolkata Knight Riders spinner Varun Chakravarthy has opened up on the impact on his mental health after he was tested COVID-19 positive in the first phase of the Indian Premier League. 

Recalling that phase Chakravarthy said that he was 'shattered' after knowing the status of his infection and he used to get a lot of hateful messages on social media and some of them went as far as blaming his illness for the postponement of the IPL 2021 and wishing his death. 

“I remember when Dr. Srikanth just called and I still remember the words he told me, 'it’s unfortunately positive Varun.' So that just shattered everything. I really didn’t know that it is going to blow up so much. I even got emails and messages on Instagram where people told me. Rather you should have been dead,” Varun Chakravarthy said in a video posted by the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Notably, He and his teammate Sandeep Warrier were the first set of players to have reported COVID-19 as the wave of the disease spread quickly across other franchises.

His senior teammate Dinesh Karthik also highlighted the uglier side of social media and said that people find it very easy to pass sweeping judgments on people without considering the way the concerned person can take it. He urged social media users to make those platforms a 'kinder place'.

“And that’s where I feel sometimes social media needs to be a kinder place. People don’t realize the gravity of what they say. Be it memes, be it videos, be it you know just the use of words. It is a spur of the moment thing for them at that point of time instinctively what they feel, they just put it out there, not realizing what the person reading it will go through,” Dinesh Karthik added.

Chakravarthy has been excellent with the ball in both the India and UAE leg of IPL 2021 and he has also been selected in India’s World T20 squad.