50-year-old former Pakistan first-class cricketer Zafar Sarfaraz passed away after testing positive for coronavirus. He was put on a ventilator after being admitted in the intensive care unit in a private hospital in Peshawar for a period of three days. Zafar is now the first professional cricketer to have succumbed to the COVID-19 disease.

Zafar made his cricket debut in 1988 and scored 616 runs on 15 first-class outings for Peshawar while also scoring 96 runs from six one-day international matches up until his retirement from all forms of the sport in 1994. He then went on to become the coach of the senior and the Under-19 Peshawar cricket teams in the 2000s and was also known as the brother of Akhtar Sarfaraz, who as well represented the Pakistan Cricket team and died 10 months back in Peshawar due to colon cancer.

Pakistan has so far seen 5,716 people testing positive for the coronavirus with 96 deaths to date and 1,378 people recovering from the dreaded disease. The country's Prime Minister Imran Khan has appealed to international stakeholders for an immediate debt relief to deal with the fallout in the economy caused by the pandemic. The nationwide lockdown in Pakistan has caused an indefinite halt in the economic activity leading to unemployment on a huge scale.