Australia summer of cricket a moveable feast due to COVID, Afghanistan and hard borders
David Mark
It is at about this time of the year, with the footy seasons over or at their climax, that thoughts turn to the gentle sound of leather on willow.
Well, that’s the idea anyway, but this year it’s less leather on willow and more frantic phone conversations between cricket organisations and governments all around the world.
So much is still up in the air: The Ashes tour, the Sheffield Shield schedule, the one-off Test against Afghanistan and the future of that country in the international cricket community.
England are due to announce their Ashes touring party in the first week of October against a backdrop of players threatening to pull out if restrictive COVID protocols are in place once they land in Australia.
The issue for the players, who’ve had their more than their fair share of bubble life in the past 18 months, is whether their families can tour with them and what conditions they’ll face.
Cricket Australia (CA) is discussing a number of plans on how to quarantine the tourists — plus the Australians returning from the IPL, including Steve Smith, David Warner and Josh Hazlewood — and those plans have been relayed to the English Cricket Board.
The front runner, given the first Test is set to be played in Brisbane, is to put the tourists up at a resort on the Gold Coast, which will allow them to train and move around to some extent.
A CA spokesman told ABC Sport that the final plan is expected to be ticked off by Australian Border Force in the next week or two.
The position of the English tourists stands in contrast to the touring Indian women, who recently went through two weeks of hard lockdown in a Brisbane hotel along with the entire Australian side.
Players from both sides were restricted to their rooms, unable to train or even meet as a group.
The two teams have since played a thrilling three-match one-day international series and, on Thursday, will begin a day-night Test on the Gold Coast.
Despite all the talk to the contrary, it remains highly likely that the English men will tour Australia, after all, it is still the premier Test series for both countries.
The only question is what England will tour — will it be a full strength Ashes party or something lesser?
An England cricketer puts his hands on his head in disbelief after winning an Ashes Test.
As fast bowler Stuart Broad said recently: “I don’t feel there will be a postponement. In my mind, it is 100 per cent clear that an England team of some description will embark on the tour.”
Already one player, all-rounder Moeen Ali is expected to announce he will retire from Test cricket and it seems another star all-rounder Ben Stokes will miss as he addresses mental health issues and a finger injury.
Then there’s the issue of the schedule — made all the more difficult by Australia’s internal borders and the varied state of COVID-19 vaccination levels around the country.
The five Tests are scheduled to be played in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, in that order.
And, despite the WA Cricket chief executive Christina Matthews asking for the Perth match to be moved in case the state government throws up a hard border, as is its wont, the CA spokesman ruled that out saying “we’ll play the season as is”.
“At the end of the day, if we don’t go to Western Australia, that’s not CA’s decision,” the spokesman said.
“We can’t do two weeks’ quarantine in an Ashes summer — particularly with the fifth Test.”
“We’ve had to do a lot of work to organise quarantine arrangements for cricketers coming into Australia,” he said.
“If there’s no chance of coming here without prolonged quarantine, it just won’t occur.”
Before the Ashes, Australia’s men’s side is due to play a one-off Test against Afghanistan in November. As it stands, the Test is still on … until it’s not.
CA has stated that the Test will be cancelled if Afghanistan’s new Taliban regime rule out women playing cricket — as a spokesman for the Taliban recently suggested.
It is a condition that any international team given membership to the International Cricket Council (ICC) must have a women’s side.
Afghanistan Cricket Board chairman Azizullah Fazli recently said: “We haven’t received any official statement yet that indicates cricket is banned for women.”
But the board is in a state of flux with a new chief executive appointed just last week — seemingly at the direction of the Taliban. CA is yet to hold any talks with the new chief executive.
One thing that seems clear is that the Taliban’s initial promises about being more inclusive than when they were last in power 20 years ago is, thus far, not being borne out.
The CA spokesman told ABC Sport a decision on the one-off Test will need to be made within the next few weeks and, while the ICC is due to meet during next month’s T20 World Cup in the UAE and Oman, that will come too late for Cricket Australia.
David Warner takes his helmet off as he walks off the field after getting out in the third Test between Australia and India.
It means CA will be making its decision based on any more definitive comments coming out of Afghanistan with advice from the Australian government.
As it stands, Afghanistan will be playing at the World Cup as the ICC hasn’t withdrawn Afghanistan’s membership.
“It’s really difficult to understand right now what the position in the country is given the evolving situation in the country,” a spokeswoman for the ICC told Newswire.
“As we understand they will be playing under the usual protocols, which is that they will be playing under [the] Afghanistan tricolour,” the ICC spokeswoman said.
It could still prove a thorny issue, with Australian Test captain Tim Paine suggesting some players could boycott Afghanistan at the Word Cup if the ICC allows them to participate.
As for the domestic season, the ongoing COVID-19 situation in NSW and Victoria has created a scheduling nightmare.
The initial plan was to play five of six Sheffield Shield matches before the Tests begins, but that now seems a forlorn hope.
South Australia and Western Australia played out a draw in their match that started in Adelaide on Friday, but the only other programmed game, between Queensland and Tasmania, has been postponed due to new COVID cases in Brisbane.
Meanwhile the two states hit hard by COVID and still in lockdown have an uncertain future — at least for men’s cricket.
The Women’s Big Bash teams from NSW and Victoria have flown down to Tasmania to begin two weeks of quarantine for the upcoming season, which begins in October with 20 matches locked in.
But the men’s Sheffield Shield and Marsh Cup teams are still waiting to see if they can leave their states for some destination unknown.
“We are still trying to get out of the state to play,” a spokesman for Cricket NSW told Newswire.
“There is some potential that could happen in the next week or two. It’s such a delicate government negotiation going on.”
The squads of both teams have been in training and are now waiting to find out what state they can fly to and what their quarantine conditions will be before they can start playing.
“The guys and girls are sick of training and want to play games as soon as possible,” Cricket Victoria boss Nick Cummins said.
“But the players are ready — if they had to play tomorrow, they’d be ready.”
It’s vital that the likes of Will Pucovski and the man who took his place as opener for the last Test Australia played against India last summer, Marcus Harris, start playing soon to push their claims for a Test spot.
It’s a messy situation, but that’s the name of the game with cricket in the time of COVID-19 and a myriad of competing commercial interests.
