Pretty sure I had Covid-19 towards end of December, claims Ian Botham

The unprecedented virus which is Covid-19 brought China to its knees towards the fag end of 2019, but it wasn’t until mid-February this year that the entire world started to realize the severity of the virus. Following China, the virus reduced Italy and the United Kingdom to shambles towards mid-March and now, with over 7 million cases worldwide, the novel virus has created one of the biggest crises in the history of the world. 

The widespread nature of the virus has meant that several former and current sportsmen have unfortunately ended up contracting it and it was only last week that world number one Novak Djokovic became the most renowned athlete in the world to test positive for Covid-19. Now, months after the outbreak of the virus, legendary English cricketer Ian Botham has come up with a startling revelation that he had contracted the virus back in December 2019, when no one really knew of the disease. 

“I think the thing to remember is that six months ago no-one even knew what this was, hadn’t heard of it. I’ve actually had it. I had it at the end of December, beginning of January, and I thought I had a bad case of flu. It’s amazing how long it has been around, we don’t know all the details. It was very much a sort of in the dark, let’s see what happens,” Botham told Good Morning Britain, reported Hindustan Times.

The 64-year-old, however, expressed his satisfaction over the people’s response to the virus but urged individuals to stay patient for a few more weeks so that the world could get back to normalcy sooner rather than later.

“I think people have been responding extremely well. I hope they show a bit more patience over the next couple of weeks or so, so we can get to a situation where everybody can move around,” he said.

A hot topic of discussion in England has been the continued ban on the resumption of recreational cricket by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who described the cricket ball as "a natural vector of disease". Several ex-English cricketers, including Michael Vaughan, have been critical of the Prime Minister’s comments and Botham joined in on the support for the resumption of recreational cricket in the country and asserted that cricket is a sport that can easily be played by adhering to social distancing rules.

“I think cricket will be back very shortly. Cricket can be played. There’s no real physical contact there, you can keep your social distancing quite easily.”