Pakistan team management says cricketer Haris Sohail was left “visibly shaken” after a ghostly encounter in a Christchurch, New Zealand, hotel room.
Sohail fled what he believed was “a supernatural presence” that shook his bed at the Rydges Latimer hotel, taking refuge in the room of a team coach after the encounter earlier this week.
Team manager Maveed Akram Cheeva said yesterday that Sohail, 26, phoned a member of the coaching staff to say he had been woken by his bed being shaken. The coach rushed to Sohail’s room and found him shaken and feverish.
Cheeva said management tried to persuade Sohail the fever might have caused a nightmare, but the player was adamant his experience was supernatural.
The hotel’s management says it knew of “no active ghost” on the premises.
Pakistan media reports said Sohail, an all-rounder who has played nine one-dayers and three Twenty20 internationals, was so “traumatized” by the experience he has been unable to train and was forced to miss a one-day warmup match against a New Zealand President’s XI.
Sohail took the field in a second warmup game in Christchurch yesterday, making 6 runs from 25 deliveries.
Cheema said Sohail was examined by the team doctor after his encounter and found to be in good health.
“He’s OK and he’s concentrating on cricket as he should be,” Cheema said.
“He had a fever. We think it was the fever that caused it, but the player still believes his bed was shaken by something and it was a supernatural something,” he added.
Sohail joins an elite group of international cricketers who have had ghostly experiences.
England fast bowler Stuart Broad switched rooms at London’s Langham Hotel last year after a ghostly experience.
Broad told the Daily Mail newspaper he had woken in the night and “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,” he said.
“Then when I turned the lights off again, the taps came on. It was very weird,” he added.
Australia all-rounder Shane Watson fled to the room of teammate Brett Lee after becoming spooked in his own room at the Lumley Castle Hotel in England in 2005.
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