CSA ‘extremely disappointed’ by eleventh-hour cancellation of tour, declines Australia’s offer to host
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Graeme Smith
Cricket Australia (CA) yesterday confirmed that they have decided to postpone the tour of South Africa for now. Cricket Australia cited ‘an unacceptable level of health and safety risk’ to cancel the tour. The tour was set to feature a three-match Test series. Following the announcement, Cricket South Africa (CSA) has expressed its disappointed upon the eleventh-hour cancellation of the series.
CSA Director of Cricket Graeme Smith shares that the board is not happy with the decision having toiled hard to successfully organise the series. In a statement earlier, CSA’s Chief Medical Officer, Shuaib Manjra, stressed that the “protocols proposed to CA were unprecedented”. He explains that hosts were ready to provide state of the art arrangements on CA’s request. But CA doesn’t seem to be very confident about the tour with a new wave of COVID-19 taking over the host nation.
“We are extremely disappointed by the decision of CA. CSA has been working tirelessly in recent weeks to ensure that we meet every single expectation of CA,” said Smith in CSA release.
“This was set to be the longest tour in a BSE comprising a three-match Test series that was scheduled to begin with Australia’s arrival later in the month. So to be informed about the CA decision at the eleventh hour is frustrating,” he added.
CSA declines CA’s request to host series
Having called off the series, CA formally offered their South African counterpart to host the series Down Under. CA CEO Nick Hockley informs that the request was declined by the CSA citing previous commitments. Hockley adds that the boards will be working closely to lock on a date to organise the series.
“We’ve been doing an enormous amount of work with CSA and we have last night’s decision, so we’ll work through over the coming weeks and months when we may be able to reschedule the series. We did offer to host the series here. But CSA made that very clear that they have also got lots of other commitments. And with quarantine periods and the like, that wasn’t feasible,” ESPNCricinfo quoted Hockley as saying.
“We didn’t explore neutral venues in too much detail. The question if you think about a neutral venue is where, and there are challenges in lots of different jurisdictions. So certainly we made the formal offer to host and CSA, which we respect entirely, made their position very clear and we’ve continued to work as hard as we can to try to make it happen. But we came to a point where people were starting to commit costs, people were starting to have to do pre-departure protocols and enter into biosecure environments in South Africa in preparation,” he added.
Following the cancellation of the series, New Zealand has automatically qualified for the final of the World Test Championship. The India and England series will decide the second finalist for the main event at Lords.
Also Read | Cricket Australia postpones Australia’s tour to South Africa due to the Covid situation in the host country
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