A sick player for Astralis has meant that Counter-Strike 1.6 legend Danny ‘zonic’ Sørensen, the team’s coach, will step in for the first match of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament IEM Oakland.
Sørensen will play the team’s first match against Ninjas in Pyjamas, according to a tweet from the Astralis account, linked below. They don’t specify how Nicolai ‘Dev1ce’ Reedtz is sick, merely mentioning that he had been delayed from making his flight until today.
Barring delays, Reedtz will be free to play the team’s second match against Cloud9.
Due to sickness, @dev1ce hasn't been able to leave for IEM Oakland until this morning. This means that our coach @zonic_cs will play in the first game vs. @NiPGaming.
If there are no delays, devve will be ready to play in time for the second game vs. @Cloud9.
— Astralis (@astralisgg) November 14, 2017
Last year, Sørensen played at the Cologne Major, filling in for Peter "dupreeh" Rothmann, who was out of action with an operation. As you can see in the video clip below, he’s kept up some of the skill that saw him have a place in mTw.dk, one of the most dominant teams in Counter-Strike 1.6’s history. Before that, he also played an event in 2014, after retiring when teams started to transition to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.