Cricket Australia may feel a debt to the New South Wales Government for helping to get the Indian team into Australia and this could play a part in deciding where the last Test is played, according to Australian cricket legend Ian Chappell.
Key points:
- The SCG Test is scheduled to start on Thursday, with about 20,000 fans allowed on each day of the game
- Ian Chappell said he understood Indian players’ reported aversion to more quarantine in Queensland for the following game
- The AMA and a leading epidemiologist have both panned the decision to play the game in front of fans
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 COVID-19 outbreaks in NSW threatened to force the third Test away from the Sydney Cricket Ground, 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”.
SCG Test ‘doesn’t make any sense’, leading epidemiologist says
With 188 active cases in New South Wales and new ones being confirmed every day, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) said playing the SCG Test in front of a crowd of thousands was an unnecessary risk to public health.
The ground will operate at a maximum of 50 per cent of its usual 48,000-strong crowd capacity on each day of the Test.
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.”
But Venues NSW, the government agency in charge of the SCG, dismissed suggestions the game could become a superspreader COVID event, with chairman Tony Shepherd saying stadiums around the country have been proven to be relatively safe throughout the pandemic.
“We’ve had 150,000 people through the SCG in the last nine months, not a single transmission,” he 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 enforced indoors, but only encouraged outdoors.
“We’ll be saying to people, ‘look, if you feel more comfortable wearing a mask outdoors, please do so’,” he said.
“We’ll encourage that, but it’s not compulsory in New South Wales or Sydney, so that’s up to the individual. But certainly indoors we’ll be making sure people follow the law.”
Leading epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said the decision to play the Test in front of fans 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,” Dr McLaws, a member of the World Health Organization’s expert panel on COVID-19, 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.
“Particularly when you’re getting, transporting people there, getting them through the turnstiles, sitting them down, having a wonderful time shouting support for their team, potentially expelling large amounts of virus if there is anyone infected.”
The Australian and Indian squads are flying from Melbourne to Sydney today.