Australia is doing no better or worse than other countries deprived of their professional sport due to the new coronavirus.
Australian cricket is mostly in the off-season, but Cricket Australia announced last week that a planned two-test tour of Bangladesh in June was off.
Australia is scheduled to host the 16-team Twenty20 World Cup from Oct. 18 to Nov. 15, but former test captain Allan Border doesn’t think it can be held unless spectators are in the stands.
International travel restrictions and quarantine periods will represent a challenge if they remain in place come October, as is widely expected. Almost 6,400 Australians have caught the virus, with 61 deaths as of late Monday.
“I just can’t imagine playing at empty stadiums. It defies belief,” Border said. “Having teams, support staff and everyone else associated with the game wandering around the country, playing games of cricket, but you can’t let people into the grounds. I just can’t see it happening.
“It’s either you play it and everyone just gets on with the job and we’re past this pandemic. Or you try to fit it in somewhere else.”
This is a nation that prides itself on its sporting competitions and its love of sport. At this time of the year there was to be action in the three major football codes: the National Rugby League and Australian rules football and the latter stages of the Super Rugby tournament.
All of those competitions were postponed indefinitely when Australia went into protective mode: among the first was social distancing and bans on international travel; then forcing incoming passengers to spend 14 days in isolation. Then shutdowns of all but essential shops and services, and finally bans on travel between states unless those travelers also spent 14 days in isolation.
