Auckland hotspot could prompt Australia to refuse to play

The lockdown has caught the Australian squad by surprise, with their biggest fear now being, if the tour proceeded, whether they would have to endure another fortnight of hotel quarantine upon returning home to Australia.

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“We are monitoring the situation in New Zealand and we are working with authorities and the government as to what all this means,” a Cricket Australia spokeswoman said on Saturday night.

A New Zealand Cricket spokesman said before the lockdown announcement that the governing body would continue to operate within the government framework.

“NZC has confidence in, and continues to operate within the New Zealand government’s alert level protocols,” he said.

“This means at level one it’s pretty much business as usual; at level two games are played behind closed doors, and at level three, games are abandoned.”

Victoria, NSW and Queensland had already reclassified Auckland as a hotspot prior to the lockdwon, with anyone arriving from Auckland unable to avoid quarantine and needing to spend two weeks in hotel isolation.

Australia’s 18 players and management had to quarantine for a fortnight upon arriving in New Zealand and are desperate to avoid another fortnight in a hotel when they return home, having spent a summer largely living in a bio-secure bubble through international or domestic competitions.

Victoria’s Department of Health has said any flights from Auckland are regarded as “red zone” arrivals.

The New Zealand and Australian governments had implemented a travel bubble since late last year which had avoided the need for quarantine.

While Andrew McDonald is coaching the T20 side, senior coach Justin Langer is in Perth enjoying a break.

Langer maintains he does not have an issue with players amid reports that the players had taken private issue with his intensity and micro-management.

The former Australian opener, who admits to being “grumpy and intense”, had said the rumblings were a “wake-up call” but says players and assistant coaches have still not raised any issues directly with him.

“That’s the killer. I’ve talked for years about honest conversations and the worst part about it all for me was it came out two weeks after the Test,” Langer said on Perth radio.

“If there was such an issue, the players or the assistant coaches would have come and spoken to me. I honestly believe that whilst there’s areas we can always improve, the only thing that’s really changed about me since I’ve been in this job, since I’ve been in the Western Australia (coaching job), is we lost a Test match. Nothing else has changed.”

Langer is contracted until mid-way through next year but said there had been no discussions on his future, heading into a home summer headlined by the Ashes.

“No time scale, not at this stage. These things have a way of working themselves out,” he said.