CA confident for SCG Test despite Sydney COVID cluster

Cricket Australia interim chief executive officer Nick Hockley remains confident the third Test of the current Vodafone Series will proceed as scheduled despite the COVID19 outbreak on Sydney's northern beaches that has impacted travel nationwide.

Tickets for the New Year Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground - starting January 7 - went on sale to members of the Australian Cricket Family yesterday and to the general public from today.

Hockley said today CA would continue to work with government and health officials in New South Wales as they "watch and learn" about the new cluster, but he noted a similar situation in Adelaide where an outbreak occurred barely a month before the current Test was due to begin.

Patrons attending the ongoing Adelaide Test who have travelled from New South Wales in the past week or so received text messages from SA Health today to ascertain whether or not they had visited any of the listed hot spots in Sydney prior to arriving in SA.

But the impact on the match at Adelaide Oval, where crowds have been capped at just over 20,000, has been minimal and Hockley is hopeful that will remain the case throughout the coming Tests in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Asked whether the Sydney Test was in jeopardy as a result of the outbreak that has seen all men's and women's Premier Cricket as well as shire competitions around Sydney cancelled for the coming weekend, Hockley said: "No, I don't think so."

"We're not panicking at all, we're staying calm.

"In Adelaide a few weeks ago, we had the pizza shop outbreak, and through that process we worked very calmly to get the players who were in Adelaide on a charter plane out of Adelaide within 24 hours and that really saved the summer.

"We've got the Sydney Test and the BBL in New South Wales after that, so the fact that we're here in Adelaide then we've got the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, it's watch, wait and see.

"I think governments around Australia have handled the pandemic very well, so we'll watch and learn and stay in touch with all the authorities."

Hockley also noted that at the height of Victoria's lockdown earlier this year, the likelihood of staging the Boxing Day Test was constantly questioned and he repeatedly urged patience given the ever-changing nature of the health landscape.

He cited the third week of November – five weeks until the third Test of the series between Australia and India was scheduled to start at the MCG – as the date crucial to decision making, by which time there had been zero new cases reported in Victoria for 20 days.

It's now 20 days until the first ball of the Sydney Test is due to be bowled, and Hockley pointed to the success authorities have shown in managing other outbreaks plus the flexibility shown in scheduling and travel as reasons why he remains confident of the SCG match proceeding as planned.

But he added the next three days or more would be critical in assessing the outlook in New South Wales.

"The Sydney Test is still some time off and the latest outbreak, no doubt residents in the affected areas will do the right thing," Hockley told radio station SEN's Test Cricket coverage today.

"The New South Wales Government and NSW Health will be all over it and we just need to be patient over the next 72 hours and even longer and give ourselves every best opportunity to play the series as scheduled.

"If the game can be played safely then we'll play it there, that's very much our starting point.

"But we've had to be agile all the way through.

"We've got contingencies plans all around for a whole range of different options.

"Thankfully we haven't yet had to enlist those contingency options and it's 17 cases (in the Sydney cluster) yesterday, 10 today so we were encouraged by that trajectory."

Hockley said last month's Adelaide outbreak, which saw members of the Adelaide Strikers BBL squad and other players in the city airlifted at short notice before borders around the country closed to SA residents, highlighted the need for players and staff to be housed in bio-secure bubbles.

That's despite some commentators querying the need to maintain the strict security net when there are negligible cases of community coronavirus transmission throughout most of Australia.

"We've had a fantastically successful summer already when you take the women's international series, the Sheffield Shield and the WBBL, so the team is very well drilled and we're monitoring the situation," he said.

"As we've worked with virtually zero community transmission, there's been lots of calls from various people and commentators 'do we actually need the hubs?'.

"But for us, of late, it's not actually been about protecting people against coronavirus as much as not getting tangled up in this web of people having to go into isolation.

"I have to say, whether it's the WBBL players, the BBL players, the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) or our own Australia squads, they have been absolutely fantastic in adhering to all the protocols.

"It's been extremely complicated but we're no different to other businesses that have navigated their way through.

"The key feature of this, really the whole six months and no-one's lived this before, is just how people have come together and we've had to solve these really complicated problems."

Vodafone Test Series v India 2020-21

Australia Test squad: Tim Paine (c), Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Matthew Wade, David Warner

India Test squad: Virat Kohli (c) (first Test only), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj

First Test: December 17-21, Adelaide Oval, 3pm AEDT (day-night)

Second Test: December 26-30, MCG, 10.30am AEDT

Third Test: January 7-11, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Fourth Test: January 15-19, Gabba, 11am AEDT