Cricket Australia’s (CA) decision to postpone South Africa tour citing the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t gone well with the home side board as it slammed the former terming the move “extremely” disappointing which will lead to “serious financial loss”.
Significantly, CA earlier in the day postponed the tour next month owing to “unacceptable health and safety risk” in that country because of a fresh COVID-19 outbreak.
The decision also virtually knocks them out of contention from the World Test Championship (WTC) final later this year.
“We are extremely disappointed by the decision of CA,” Cricket South Africa (CSA) director of cricket, Graeme Smith said in a statement.
“CSA has been working tirelessly in recent weeks to ensure that we meet every single expectation of CA,” he added.
“This was set to be the longest tour in a BSE (bio-safety cabinet or biological safety cabinet) comprising a three-match Test series that was scheduled to begin with Australia’s arrival later in the month. So to be informed about the CA decision at the eleventh hour is frustrating,” he further expressed.
Significantly, the Australian team was scheduled to play a three-Test series during the tour.
Earlier last month, CA had named a 19-man squad for the tour.
Issuing a statement, CA said earlier on Tuesday that it believed it had no choice but to cancel the series “due to the public health situation in South Africa”, including a second wave and a new strain of coronavirus.
“Following extensive due diligence with medical experts, it has become clear that traveling from Australia to South Africa at this current time poses an unacceptable level of health and safety risk to our players, support staff and the community,” CA chief executive Nick Hockley had said.