The third Test between Australia and India will go ahead at the SCG, but with crowds reduced to 25 per cent of the ground’s capacity — about 10,000 people per day.
Key points:
- The SCG Test is scheduled to start on Thursday
- A member of the WHO’s COVID expert panel panned the decision to play the game in front of fans
- The president of the AMA urged fans to watch from home, rather than go to the ground
Cricket Australia (CA) and Venues NSW announced the move after days of speculation about the Test and the fourth and final match in the series — scheduled for the Gabba — in light of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney.
“In response to the public health situation in NSW, we are working closely with Venues NSW and NSW Health to put appropriate biosecurity measures in place for our staff, players, match officials, broadcasters and fans to ensure we play the third Test at the SCG safely,” CA chief executive Nick Hockley said in a statement.
“Reducing the capacity of the venue is crucial in achieving social distancing requirements, and we sincerely thank ticketholders for their patience as we process refunds today, reconfigure the SCG seating plan to deliver these social distancing measures and go back on sale.”
People who bought tickets under the original 50 per cent crowd restrictions will be refunded. They will have a 19-hour window to buy tickets from 5:00pm AEDT today until midday AEDT on Tuesday, when remaining available tickets will be released for sale to the public.
Allowing tens of thousands of fans to attend the third Test at the SCG has been criticised by some experts given the COVID-19 situation in the city.
But the third game of the four-Test series will start as scheduled on Thursday in Sydney, despite concerns over the potential for coronavirus to spread between attendees.
There are currently 188 active cases in New South Wales with new ones being confirmed every day, but Venues NSW, the government agency in charge of the ground, dismissed suggestions the game could become a superspreader COVID-19 event.
“We’ve had 150,000 people through the SCG in the last nine months, not a single transmission,” chairman Tony Shepherd said.
“There’s been no transmission at any stadium in Australia over the COVID-19 period [and] that includes the other two stadiums that we manage in Sydney, so the stadiums have proven to be very safe in fact.”
He said rules about wearing masks and social distancing would be strictly enforced indoors, but they could only “encourage” people to wear them outdoors.
But Mary-Louise McLaws, a professor at UNSW and member of the World Health Organization’s expert panel on COVID-19, said the decision to play the Test and allow crowds in Sydney “doesn’t make any sense when it comes to outbreak management”.
“[188 active cases] is an enormous number. That’s a number that we haven’t had for months since way back when we were seeded by the Victorian second wave,” Professor McLaws said.
“If it’s good enough for the health department to call for mass screenings, it’s good enough to say we have a problem. And for some reason, that problem seems to stop at the gates of the cricket ground and that doesn’t make any sense at all.
Despite NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant’s suggestion last week that going to the ground risked less spread than watching at home, AMA president Omar Khorshid urged fans to watch the match on TV.
“The safe thing to do is actually to say ‘look, we are in a health emergency here, it’s time to make decisions on the basis of health rather than the economy and sport and all these things that we want to get back to normal’,” Dr Khorshid said.
“It’s just the wrong decision and we’re certainly calling on the New South Wales Government to re-look at this question.”
NSW Acting Premier John Barilaro called on people from regional NSW to consider not making what he called “an annual pilgrimage” to Sydney for the Test.
‘We have to suck it up and get on with it’
While the decision to keep the third Test in Sydney has attracted criticism, Australian cricket legend Ian Chappell said CA may feel a debt to the New South Wales Government for helping to get the Indian team into Australia in the first place.
Strict coronavirus quarantine rules for international arrivals in Western Australia and Queensland meant the Indian squad instead landed in Sydney ahead of the limited-overs series in November and December.
Three one-day internationals and three Twenty20s were played across Sydney and Canberra before the Test series kicked off in Adelaide on December 17.
After outbreaks in NSW threatened to force the third Test away from the SCG, Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive Nick Hockley, in announcing the game would not be moved, said the NSW Government’s “exceptional support” in the early stages of the tour “must not be forgotten”.
And Chappell said while CA might not feel an “obligation” to repay NSW for their help, he is “sure that played in to Cricket Australia’s decision”.
“Admittedly it was a slightly different time in that period — there have been outbreaks since — but they’ve already proved that they can do it safely.”
After being in danger of losing its only Test of the summer, Sydney is now a possibility to host two in a row, with the Indian team reportedly not keen on going into hard quarantine in Brisbane for the fourth and final Test at the Gabba.
“A lot of their players through the IPL (Indian Premier League T20 tournament) have been in a form of isolation/lockdown for about six months, and you can understand them not wanting to go back to a hard lockdown,” Chappell said ahead of the third Test, which starts on Thursday.
Due to the Queensland Government’s rules around travellers from Greater Sydney, the teams would only be allowed out of hotel quarantine to train and play the Test.
In Adelaide and Melbourne they were allowed to go to cafes and restaurants to eat, as long as they sat outside and avoided direct interaction with the general public.
“I sympathise with the organisers and the players. Having been in isolation for a short time in Adelaide, I can understand where India are coming from.”
Australia off-spinner Nathan Lyon said he understood the difficulties of being in some sort of quarantine for a long time, but said he saw it as “a small sacrifice for us to make”.
On December 29, CA said Sydney and Brisbane would have “appropriate biosecurity measures” to ensure the series is completed as safely as possible and thanked Indian cricket’s governing body “for their continued support of the original schedule”.
The Australian and Indian squads are flying from Melbourne to Sydney today.
