New Delhi: The sudden outbreak of coronavirus in the South Africa forced ‘cricket Australia’ to postpone its tour.
The Australian side was scheduled to head to South Africa later this month, but all the plans have now come to a halt after CA’s interim chief executive Nick Hockley said “travelling to South Africa posed ‘unacceptable’ risk to the touring party.”
At present, South Africa is battling a second wave of COVID-19 and a new variant of the virus.
Hockley in his statement said that “Following extensive due diligence with medical experts, it has become clear that traveling from Australia to South Africa at this current time poses an unacceptable level of health and safety risk to our players, support staff and the community,”
“We acknowledge the significant amount of work by CSA in planning for the tour, during which we made it clear that CA was prepared to take on additional cost and effort to make the series happen.” Hockley added.
“This decision has not been made lightly and we are extremely disappointed, especially given the importance of continuing international cricket at this time, our valued relationship with CSA, and our aspirations to compete in the inaugural ICC World Test Championship.”
After the announcement of CA – New Zealand became the first team to qualify for the final of the inaugural edition of the World Test Championship.
Australia’s chances of making to the Lord’s final in June have taken a big hit as they have to rely on other results to go their way
At present, India is on the top of the World Test Championship table 71.7 Percentage of Points (PCT). New Zealand, who are the 2nd spot with 70 PCT have confirmed their place in the final as they will not drop further after completing their quota of matches in the current WTC cycle.
India will have to win at least 2 matches out of the upcoming 4 and not lose the other two matches of the series. They can qualify even with a 2-1 result against England in the home series.
_Vinayak