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Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain, and Ian Ward discuss the likelihood of the England to South Africa tour continuing after two ‘unconfirmed positive tests’ for Covid-19 among the touring group.
Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain and Ian Ward discuss the likelihood that the England to South Africa tour will continue after two ‘unconfirmed positive tests’ for Covid-19 among the touring group.
After the first ODI between South Africa and England was dropped due to two hotel staff testing positive for Covid-19 and two other “unconfirmed positive tests” among the England touring group, Nasser Hussain considers the ramifications for the rest of the series. …
It has to be in those unconfirmed positives, you have to expect them to be false positives because if they are shown to be positive then it is a total and utter disaster.
What do you do with those two England players or the back room staff? They will have to stay here for two weeks. When you’re on a team, you’re not going to turn around and tell your teammates, ‘Okay, we’re going home for Christmas, you stay here,’ so it becomes a real mess.
Fingers crossed, they are retested and it was an anomaly, but players will be increasingly concerned that the bubble has been broken and will be counting down the days until Thursday and their flight home.
They were to play Monday at Newlands, I suppose they could delay the game and play Tuesday and Wednesday; there’s no way they’ll get three games, but they could play back-to-back games and fly back on Thursday.
It will be a challenge, but players will get used to it, back-to-back games for them, they will just do it, dust it off and get home. But mentally it will be tough, especially for some of these guys who have been in the IPL like the boss, Eoin Morgan.
Eoin Morgan’s leadership will be tested again when England players self-isolate in Cape Town
He played all those IPL weeks, in a bubble, and then he comes here. For many of them it will be mentally difficult, for some of the youngsters it will be a case of ‘fingers crossed, please, please, please, I just want to play a game!’
Players like Reece Topley and Olly Stone, who have been through so many injuries, will just want to go out on one of the great stages of world cricket and play for England again. There will be so many mixed emotions and it is where Morgan’s leadership, which we never doubt, will come to light.
Those two hotel employees could have been with anyone, then they are serving the England cricket team. That is the problem with being in a bubble. It works if it’s completely safe, but it also makes it doubly worse because they’re all on top of each other and then when the bubble bursts, that can spread across the entire team.
The England players will think it’s December 6th, then we’ll have to spend two weeks here if one of us makes it and we’re going to be home late for Christmas. Can we spread it to grandparents and other family members and things like that?
They will be really worried. Some of them have to go to Sri Lanka on January 2, so there will be a lot of meetings, you can imagine the WhatsApp groups between the players: ‘Should we get home for the sake of two or three of a day? international?
The first ODI of the series between South Africa and England has been abandoned twice in the last three days
The ramifications of South Africa’s broadcasting rights are enormous. That is why all this effort has been launched and England will take it into account; the West Indies and Pakistan came to England and did their part, they stayed in the bubble; there is a bit of unity in world cricket that “we will take care of you, you take care of us”.
People will not forget what the West Indies and Pakistan did, so England will not get on a plane and say ‘we are not interested in complying with your broadcast right’. They will do their best, wait for the test results of all the players, and then let the hierarchy decide.
The only thing is, it’s Christmas, family time, and they’ve been in a bubble for so long. Could they face another two weeks of quarantine if a person receives it?
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It’s amazing what the ECB did over the summer, the money they dumped on hand sanitizers and testing every day. In England they made it as safe as possible, they threw everything in those test series and one-day series.
I’m not saying I haven’t done that here, but bubbles break, they are not 100% safe. I was thinking the other day, what’s different about cricket? Spectators at home might be thinking that Mo Salah got Covid and just got pulled from Liverpool’s side, Lewis Hamilton got Covid and just got pulled from the Grand Prix.
It wasn’t until the Newcastle game on Friday night that such a large part of the team got Covid that they had to cancel the game. I repeat, the difference is that they are in a bubble and if it spreads, as the cliché goes, it spreads like a virus and everyone goes down, then you have serious problems.
If all the tests are negative, everyone is fine, except for the South African player who got it for the week, it will have to be Tom Harrison and Ashley Giles, who is here, who will have to convince the guys from England.
0:48 Ashley Giles says the welfare area, including the ECB’s strategy around biosecurity bubbles, could give England an edge over its opposition.
For the sake of three or four days and the broadcast rights, are you willing to risk it? In case that bubble breaks again and on Wednesday afternoon someone in that hotel comes in with the virus, it is not 100% safe, so there will have to be something convincing.
When you talk about a player’s health, I think you need 100 percent team participation. The ECB is very, very clear, and Cricket South Africa too, that the well-being and well-being of its players is absolutely paramount.
They will put player opinion at the top of their list, but hopefully it will be negative.
I don’t know how many of the England players are sitting there thinking ‘Do we really need this?’ Also, it is mental health; on the back of all the bubbles, when this suddenly hits you right at the end.
You can imagine that everyone has their newspapers and on their phones on Thursday like outside of bubble time, going home and with the family wanting to see them. Then right at the end of all this mental anguish. That’s where it depends on convincing Harrison and Giles.
The Ageas Bowl and the Emirates Old Trafford were the biosecurity venues used, as the ECB successfully hosted six tests and numerous white ball matches during the summer.
We have a great team here and there will be a lot of guys saying ‘well I’m doing all this and I’m not even playing.’ We are not moaning, they are not moaning, it is Covid’s fault, it is not an international player’s fault. We have already seen the efforts made by the CSA and the ECB, the players and the management.
Look at how good the IPL was, cricket has done very well to bring this show to the road since last summer. Now he has had a small setback and an obstacle, and they will have to try to overcome it.
I’d like to think we’ll see more cricket on this tour from what I said earlier, think about what Pakistan, the West Indies, Ireland and Australia did.
I’d like to think England will give it a go if those tests come out negative, but it’s easy for me to say, those players have been through much more than we have.
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