Giving a detailed account of Covid-19 reaching his immediate family that led to his departure from the halfway stage of the IPL 2021, off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin said that a majority of his family members had contracted Covid-19 and some of them also got seriously ill and recovered only ‘somehow.’
"Almost everyone from my place had got affected due to Covid. In fact, a few of my cousins also got admitted and were serious and they somehow recovered,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
Ashwin recalled the sleepless nights he suffered while his family members were battling Covid-19. He said that not sleeping for as long as eight to nine days while also playing games became an unbearable amount of stress for him and hence, he took the decision to take a break from the IPL and spend some time with his family.
"I couldn't sleep for almost eight-nine days. Since I couldn't sleep, it was really stressful for me. I was playing matches without getting any sleep. And since I found it really taxing, I had to quit IPL and go home midway. In fact, when I left around that time, I had thoughts on whether I will be able to play cricket thereafter. But still, I did what was required at that point of time. Anyway, after that, I thought there won't be any cricket for some time,” Ashwin added.
However, Ashwin also considered returning to the bio bubble and IPL once the situation started improving in his family but by that time the BCCI had postponed the tournament due to rising cases in multiple teams.
"In between, when people in my house started recovering, I thought of coming back into the IPL and that's when IPL was called off," he said.
At first, Ashwin’s wife Prithi Narayanan had revealed the state of Ashwin’s family members and said that their own children were the source of infection in many cases that prompted Ashwin to come back home.