The Covid-19 pandemic will have a disastrous financial implications on the home series against India.
MELBOURNE (Australia): Australia’s chief medical officer said on Sunday that it would be impossible for cricket to resume with the Indian team scheduled to play this summer.
“There is a long way to go,” chief medical officer Brendan Murphy told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“We’ve not seen the proposals yet. I can assure you that there would need to be a lot of safeguards, particularly if it was talking about teams coming from a country with a high rate of transmission. That would be a concern and we would obviously need to mitigate that. There are mitigations that could be in place but it is very early in the process.”
Meanwhile, Test captain Tim Paine said players may consider a pay cut in the short term to help bail out cash-strapped Cricket Australia.
Australia are scheduled to host the T20 World Cup in October, but the tournament will be likely to be put back until February.
However, the covid-19 pandemic will have a disastrous financial implications the home series against India.
In 2016, at the start of the cycle, CA had cash and investments worth about $270m, but that has dropped to about $97m in March this year.
While Cricket Australia staff have been stood down and there have already been redundancies at South Australia, there are also possible job cuts ahead at Victoria.
“Victorian cricket is not immune to the impacts of coronavirus,” Cricket Victoria CEO Andrew Ingleton said on Sunday. “We are currently working through what that means for our organisation and the broader cricket community.”
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) dictates that CA must, by April 30, provide the ACA with a list of national contracts plus revenue estimates for 2020-21.
CA is also desperately examining how to host the t20 World Cup. Playing the T20 showcase tournament in empty stadiums is being considered.
