The overbearing trauma of having to stay away from his family for close to three months in the middle of a pandemic and inside a heavily protected bio-secure bubble where cases of Covid-19 began popping up over the last couple of days, made Suresh Raina decide to take a ‘red-eye’ flight on Saturday morning from Dubai to New Delhi.
The 33-year-old, who retired from international cricket earlier this month, had been in Chennai before CSKs departure to the UAE, and was practicing along with the rest of the team in a bio-secure bubble.
Everything seemed fine within the camp as the team left for UAE on August 21 and checked-in at the hotel in Dubai to undergo a 6 day quarantine period as per the BCCI protocol.
However, as cases of Covid began to rise within the camp in the last three days and two cricketers – Deepak Chahar and Rituraj Gaikwadtested positive along with 10 others (non-players), Raina began to "extensively worry about the situation" and remained "highly apprehensive" about staying back in the UAE.
On Friday night, in fact, there was a huge ruckus. He tried calling all his teammates, coach Stephen Fleming Skipper MS Dhonig again and again to share his concerns. MS, in fact, also tried explaining things to him but nothing worked. He was badly psyched up and worried. Eventually, everybody else realised there was no point holding him (back) from travelling back because he was totally gripped by fear," those in the know told TOI.
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