IPL 2020: "Life more important right now; IPL can wait," Suresh Raina amid growing COVID-19 crisis

Raina mentioned how good Dhoni batted in CSK training camp.

The Coronavirus outbreak has crossed the one million mark worldwide, with more than 54,000 people losing their lives to this pandemic. More than 219,000 people have also recovered from it on the positive side, but the outbreak has put all life to a halt.

Many countries have called off sporting events and put citizens under lockdown for varied time periods in order to flatten the curve of the pandemic. One such sporting event is the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020, which was supposed to start from March 29 and has been postponed to April 15.

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72 people have lost their lives in India with over 2,000 positive cases of COVID-19 being discovered in the country. This has led to dark clouds of uncertainty hovering over the 13^th season of the most popular T20 league in the world.

However, Chennai Super Kings’ vice-captain Suresh Raina feels that league comes second to human lives. “Life is most important at this point of time. IPL can surely wait. We all need to follow the government guidelines on lockdown else we all face the consequences. When life gets better, we can think about IPL. So many people are dying at the moment, we need to save lives,” Raina told PTI.

He further said that we should appreciate the smaller moments more in the current crisis.

“I am relaxing in the lockdown, cooking and spending time with the kids. There is so much more to life than cricket, moments like these make you realize that. With this lockdown, people should realize the importance of being down to earth,” he said.

He also mentioned that he is loving doing the cooking for his family. “I am used to cooking since my hostel days, so I enjoy doing that. Wife (who gave birth to a boy last week) and kid are still recovering, so happy to contribute with the household work,” Raina mentioned.

Raina and MS Dhoni had reunited in Chennai for the training camp organized by CSK before the planned start of the IPL. Speaking about it, Raina said, “It was a nice camp. I was there for two months but then this happened. Got to spend some time with Dhoni. He was batting so well in the nets, he had the hunger of a youngster. In one session, he batted for three hours at a stretch.”

(PTI inputs)