Out of all the drama cricket offers you, the most intriguing of them all are the stories of paranormal encounter between cricketers and supernatural beings. Spectres with unearthly stature have plagued a few cricketers’ nightstay at infamous haunted hotels during their stay.
Much to the surprise of everyone, the narratives do not come from faceless nondescript cricketers but illustrious monikers of the sport, who literally had to run in the middle of the night to their teammates rooms to parry the clutches of first-class horror.
We will look at five cricketers who had encounters with the paranormal that left them scathed for life.
- Shane Watson
Barring a phenomenal Ashes in 2005, Shane Watson had another titanic party to attend to as he gatecrashed in a ghostly social gathering at the Lumley castle Hotel, Durham. This hotel has had its fair share of infamous intimidating legacy that scarred several celebrities for life.
It was on June 22nd that Watson, the Australian all-rounder was left mentally frayed after enduring a sleepless night due to his haunted surroundings inside the hotel.
After being narrated the story of how the owner of the manor passed away under enigmatic circumstances, Watson sensed discomfort in the air around him.
“I saw ghosts. I swear I’m telling the truth. Several of the players were uneasy although a lot of them in the morning said they were fine … but maybe they were just trying to be brave.” Australian team media officer, Belinda Dennett, corroborated the narrative.
- Stuart Broad
The sensational English pacer who recently hogged the limelight for claiming 500 Test scalps, was mired in an ordeal which was of phantasmagoric ilk as Charles Dickens would put it in Doctor Who.
In 2014, Langam Hotel played host to a double-pronged ghost story that was confirmed by Stuart Broad and then averred by Ben Stokes.
“During the Sri Lanka Test, I had to move rooms. It was so hot in the room I just couldn’t sleep. All of a sudden the taps in the bathroom came on for no reason. I turned the lights on and the taps turned themselves off. Then when I turned the lights off again the taps came on. It was very weird. It really freaked me out. I ended up asking to move rooms. Bealey [Broad’s girlfriend] was pretty spooked, too, and I know Moeen Ali’s other half won’t stay there because she’s so frightened of the ghosts,” Broad said to the English media.
He also continued, ““During the Sri Lanka Test, one night I woke up in the middle of the night, around 1.30 a.m. and I was convinced there was a presence in the room. It was the weirdest feeling. Ben Stokes has had some problems sleeping as well. He’s on the third floor, which is where a lot of the issues are. I’m telling you, something weird is going on.”
- Haris Sohail
Pakistani cricketer, Haris Sohail experienced a ghostly jeopardy that left him shook by a good deal in Christchurch. It was at Rydges Latimer hotel where the entire incident unfolded. Apparently he found his bed shaken fiercely by superhuman phenomenon.
The Pakistani batsman went to sleep to the coach’s room that night as the incident caught him scared and off-guard. By the time the coach reached Sohail’s room, he found that Sohail had a fever and was in arrant despair.
- Saurav Ganguly
Once again it was Lumley Castle that played host to another paranormal unfolding and this time it was Saurav Ganguly, former Indian skipper, who was on the victim cards.
Ganguly became the third cricketer to have revealed that he was in the middle of something unearthly and this caused him a good deal of distress for a considerable span of time.
He woke up to the sound of his tap running but when he walked up to the tap, it was closed. This incident kept on reiterating itself, unless Ganguly sensed the hand of the invisible in this mischief and chose to run to the hills, oops, to Robin Singh’s room.
- MS Dhoni
This time it was the destiny of the most decorated Indian skipper to feel the heat of ghostly sensations creeping down his kin in a hapless incident. Once again the infamous Langham hotel played the nasty abode to the prancing specters that left Dhoni reeling while India toured England in 2014.
Realizing the sensations of fear slowly building around himself, Dhoni took the decision of making an early shift to ensure that his burly stature of mind isn’t disrupted by the apparitions around him.
