A day after postponing the tour of South Africa which consists of three Test-match series, Cricket Australis’s interim CEO Nick Hockley has confirmed that they offered Cricket South Africa to host the series in Australia but they decline, citing other commitments. Australia was scheduled to play the three-Test match series against South Africa in March, but they postponed the event because of Coronavirus.
After the decision of Australia, the Twitter handle of Cricket South Africa expressed their disappointment towards Cricket Australia. Former South Africa captain and current CSA director of Cricket, Graeme Smith, said that Cricket Australia’s decision was frustrating.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Cricket South Africa was informed by Cricket Australia that their scheduled tour to SA will not be going ahead due to Covid-19 fears.
“We are extremely disappointed by the decision of CA,” Director of Cricket, Graeme Smith, stated. 🗣 pic.twitter.com/NW0ZfyMFbT
— Proteas Men (@ProteasMenCSA) February 2, 2021
After the disappointment of South Africa, Cricket Australia’s CEO also expressed their side of the conversation.
“We’ve been doing an enormous amount of work with CSA and we have last night’s decision, so we will work through over the coming weeks and months when we may be able to reschedule the series. We did offer to host the series here, but CSA made that very clear that they have also got a lot of other commitments and with quarantine periods and the like, that wasn’t feasible,” Hockley said.
“We didn’t explore neutral venues in too much detail, the question if you think about a neutral venue is where, and there are challenges in lots of different jurisdictions, so certainly we made the formal offer to host and CSA, which we respect entirely, made their position very clear and we’ve continued to work as hard as we can to try to make it happen. But we came to a point where people were starting to commit costs, people were starting to have to do pre-departure protocols and enter into bio-secure environments in South Africa in preparation,” he added.
He said that Cricket Australia tried everything but the “residual risk” didn’t allow them to make any other decision.
“I think we gave ourselves every shot, we couldn’t have left it any later, but in the end that residual risk, the implications if we did get a positive, the chances of getting a positive, meant we really didn’t have any other decision,” said Hockley.
