An emotional Tim Seifert has recounted the harrowing experience of recovering from Covid-19 in India.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The Black Caps wicketkeeper-batsman was left stranded earlier this month following the postponement of the Indian Premier League.
Just hours before he was due to return home from the virus-ravaged country with other New Zealanders involved in the tournament, Seifert was told he had tested positive.
Recalling the moment he was given the news by an Indian official, the 26-year-old broke down in tears.
"The world stops a little bit," Seifert said via an online media conference from an Auckland hotel, where he is completing his two weeks of managed isolation.
"I just couldn't really think what was next and that was the scary part...
"You hear about the bad things and I thought that was going to happen to me ... it definitely was hard."
The day after his positive test, Seifert was transferred to a different hotel with a private medical facility.
While his physical symptoms never reached a point where he needed to go to hospital, he admitted it was a challenging few days from a mental and emotional standpoint.
"Getting told I had Covid in another country, the news [in India] is all about lack of oxygen and you don't know if you're going to be in that situation.
"I [also] knew I had been within 24 hours of getting on a flight back to New Zealand. You're preparing yourself to go home, I've got my wedding coming up, seeing family and then, bang, you get told you've tested positive.
"It's a feeling you can't explain. It's just the whole unknown of what Covid is, how you're going to react to it."
Seifert said staying positive helped him get through, and was full of praise for those managing his situation and keeping him assured everything was being taken care of.
Along with management staff from his IPL team, the Kolkata Knight Riders, and those of rival team Chennai, Seifert said former Black Caps captains Brendon McCullum (KKR coach) and Stephen Fleming (Chennai coach) had been of huge support.
"They made everything a lot easier.
"They made sure that things would be put in place and the CSK management and CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders, they made life easy for me to know that everything would be all right and when that time was to come home, they'd try everything to get me home safely...
"It was my first time being involved in the IPL in India. They (McCullum and Fleming) had all the connections, and they were the closest guys, other than the players, that I felt comfortable talking to about the situation. They were there for me."