Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) spinner Varun Chakravarthy opened up on the phase when he was tested positive for Covid-19 during the first phase of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021. On World Mental Health Day, KKR posted a video on Twitter that featured the mystery spinner with batting coach Abhishek Nayar and teammate Dinesh Karthik. In the video, Varun opened up about the mental torture he went through when he contracted the virus. He reflected on the derogatory emails and messages he received from trolls. Nayar and Karthik supported Varun and all other players who went through backlash from frustrated fans on the show.
“You should have been dead”
In the video, Varun revealed, “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.”
“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,” Karthik added.
“But I felt that is ridiculous. You know to go back and blame someone, a guy like Varun who is anyway so intense and takes things so seriously in life. I feel a little empathy was required. And I felt it was taken very wrongly,” Nayar expressed his opinion.
The 30-year-old was the first one to test positive for Covid-19 in the first phase. He was tested on the day when KKR was scheduled to take on Royal Challengers Bangalore. His teammate Sandeep Warrior also tested positive and with cases of COVID coming from different camps, IPL 2021 was temporarily suspended resulting in all the players returning to their homes midway through the tournament.
