Cummins allowed to leave hotel, fly home to NSW

Pat Cummins has been granted permission to leave Adelaide with Cricket Australia (CA) confirming today the Test captain sidelined from the second Ashes contest will take a chartered flight home to Sydney.

Cummins was ruled out of the ongoing day-night Test against England after a patron at the Little Hunter Steakhouse he was dining at on Wednesday evening tested positive for COVID-19.

In a plan approved by South Australian health officials, Cummins will “self-drive” from the hotel he is currently isolating at and get on a private plane to take him home on Saturday, CA said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

It will be a welcome relief for the Australian Test team hierarchy, who would not have wanted their skipper and best fast bowler couped up in a hotel room for a full seven days ahead of next week’s Boxing Day Test.

Having tested negative for the virus on Thursday, it seems unlikely Cummins will be under any restrictions when he returns to Sydney.

New South Wales Health does not currently have ‘areas of concern’ in South Australia and unlike SA, NSW no longer lists exposure sites.

His return home will leave Australia buoyant that both him and Josh Hazlewood will be available for Boxing Day, with Hazlewood out of the Adelaide Test due to a side injury he has described as “rare”.

Side strains are commonly a four-week injury but Australia’s medicos believe the injury Hazlewood suffered during the Ashes opener in Brisbane is not typical and are hopeful he will recover in time for the Melbourne Test following 7-10 day’s rest.

“It’s coming along – it’s been a frustrating time,” Hazlewood told Channel Seven. “It feels like it’s coming along nicely. Not much progress yet but hopefully over the next week or so we see some vast improvement.

“I certainly hope (to be right for Boxing Day). This side strain is quite odd and quite rare. We’re taking it day by day. We’ve still got a bit of time up our sleeve for Melbourne.”

CA chief executive Nick Hockley on Friday disputed South Australia Premier Steven Marshall’s suggestion the governing body, and not the SA government, had been responsible for Cummins’ omission for the Test.

"We called an emergency meeting with our contacts at SA Health and they confirmed to us that Pat would be treated as a close contact," Hockley told SEN radio on Friday.

Marshall had denied responsibility, suggesting CA had issued its statement on Wednesday ruling Cummins out before SA Health officials had spoken to the cricketer.

“I think this was a decision that was made by Cricket Australia. Let’s be very clear about it,” the Premier told reporters on Friday. “They put their statement out before we had actually conducted the interview with Pat.

“So the issue is, I think, that Cricket Australia probably formed the opinion that they didn’t want to have a chance for the entire two teams to be deemed as close contacts and ruin the entire Test series.”

Stricter bio-security conditions had always awaited players for the upcoming third and fourth Tests in Melbourne and Sydney, where the virus is more prevalent.

“The rules obviously in Sydney and Melbourne are different. We can't eat indoors because obviously this was a different level compared to there,” teammate David Warner told reporters on Thursday.

“You can't help what happened with Patty. It's inevitable in today's society that people are going to get COVID or become close contacts and unfortunately he was in a spot where someone had tested positive that day.”

Vodafone Men's Ashes

Squads

Australia: Pat Cummins (c), Steve Smith (vc), Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner

England: Joe Root (c), James Anderson, Jonathan Bairstow, Dom Bess, Stuart Broad, Rory Burns, Jos Buttler, Zak Crawley, Haseeb Hameed, Dan Lawrence, Jack Leach, Dawid Malan, Craig Overton, Ollie Pope, Ollie Robinson, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood

Schedule

First Test: Australia won by nine wickets

Second Test: December 16-20, Adelaide Oval

Third Test: December 26-30, MCG

Fourth Test: January 5-9, SCG

Fifth Test: January 14-18, Blundstone Arena