South African all-rounder and the costliest buy in Indian Premier League Auction history, Chris Morris said that he is relieved after being sent back home following a chaotic situation in the IPL bio-bubbles. As many as ten personnel from four different franchises tested positive for the novel coronavirus which included Varun Chakravarthy, Sandeep Warrier, Amit Mishra and Wriddhiman Saha.
Morris along with his ten South African teammates have reportedly reached their home. Morris said that it’s a relief that he has managed to reach home amidst such difficult times in India.
“The moment we heard that, when players are testing positive, inside the bubble, then everyone starts asking questions. The alarm bells definitely started going off for all of us,” Morris said. “By Monday when they postponed that game (between Kolkata and Royal Challengers Bangalore), we knew the tournament was under pressure to continue.”
The tournament had to be postponed indefinitely after SRH wicket-keeper batsman Wriddhiman Saha tested positive on the matchday against the Mumbai Indians. The BCCI had no other options but to delay the tournament. However, the SRH management and all its player and staffs are quite surprised to see Saha testing positive despite stringent measure being in action.
“I was chatting to our team doctor, whose room was across the hallway from my mine in the hotel, and Kumar (Sangakarra, the Royals’ head coach) came around the corner, and drew his finger across his throat, and then we knew it was over,” Morris said.
Meanwhile, Gerald Coetzee who was named as the replacement for Andrew Tye after the Australian decided to pull out midway through the tournament had just arrived a week ago. Morris said that he tried to comfort the young fast bowler who was panicking quite a bit.
“And then it was chaos! The England guys especially were panicking because they needed to isolate in hotels in England first, and apparently, there weren’t any rooms,” Morris said.
“I know poor Gerald was panicking a bit, I mean he’s only 20 and all this is going on. I tried to keep him under my wing a bit and made sure he was ready when the 12.30 am pick up came at the hotel. It was eerie, it was just a handful of us in that whole hotel at the time,” Morris further added.
Morris had earlier said that it was important for the cricketers to give their heart out in the field especially for the people who are going through tough times. He added that IPL was actually helping people to stay home at least for that duration of time.
“For me, this was always a two-fold thing; on the one hand we’re playing a tournament, all happy and smiling in a bubble, while outside so many people are suffering,” Morris said.
“On the flip side of it, there was the fact that by playing, we were ensuring people actually stayed at home, watched us and at least had something to smile about or something else to think about – even if it was being unhappy with how we played in a game – for three hours each night,” he concluded.