NASSER: I FIND IT ODD ENGLAND DITCHED TOUR

Summer games saved ECB millions... so could our stars have played on to help South Africa?

The first thing to say is that it’s great the latest Covid tests on the england player and member of backroom staff affected here in Cape Town came back negative.

And it spoke volumes for Ashley Giles when he stated he would stay in South Africa had anyone been forced into quarantine by another positive, rather than leave them here alone.

That’s the Ashley Giles I played with. he’s such a team man and it was no surprise he would have taken the responsibility to stay for another 10 days if necessary.

Now everyone in the england tour party can either come home tomorrow or get off to the Big Bash without fear of getting the virus here or passing it on to their families. That’s as long as there are no positive results in the final round of testing today.

But there are questions to answer. For one, it does seem incredibly odd that an england squad who have not been affected by Covid at all during their stay in South Africa have upped sticks and gone home with three games left to play.

Maybe down the line, the players might look back on this and think, ‘Could we have played those games? Was it that bad?’

After all, they only have to think back to the summer to remember what West Indies, Pakistan, Australia and Ireland did to make sure the english season could take place in full. It saved millions of pounds for the eCB.

Then look at all the effort and money Cricket South Africa put into this short tour to make sure the lights could be kept switched on for international cricket. Could england, who brought an enlarged squad here to cope with this sort of situation, not have played those 50-over games? Could they have reacted differently in South Africa’s hour of need?

There are some peculiarities here. Once england had said on Monday they would not fulfil the fixtures, I thought they would be out of here immediately on their charter flight. But they are staying in the bubble — that has been breached — until tomorrow. Wouldn’t it have been better to get out and play than stay in the affected hotel?

But, as Giles said, they cannot have been in the right frame of mind to play and the bottom line is that it has been affecting the players’ mental health, while bubble fatigue after nine months of playing cricket in an unnatural environment is kicking in.

I know to a degree what it is like because I stayed in the bubbles at the Ageas Bowl and emirates Old Trafford in the summer, although it was relatively easy for us compared to the players. Clearly bubble life is really getting to them and their brains must be scrambled.

Certainly no one from outside this environment should underestimate how difficult it can be. Yes, cricketers have a great life and stay in great places — and there are few places they go that are greater than Newlands and the Vineyard hotel — but dealing with this situation away from family, with the possibility of catching Covid, is not easy.

So, if the eCB are rightfully saying the players’ well-being is their primary concern then they had little option than to listen when the team told them this week they were feeling anxious and wanted out.

It would have been double standards from Giles and Co if they hadn’t reacted the way they’ve done this week.

There is light at the end of the tunnel now and we can only hope the vaccine enables us to return to a semblance of normality by next summer. But before then there will be difficulties in getting cricket staged around the world.

We have seen england players such as Jofra Archer, Ollie Pope and, most recently, Tom Banton and Rory Burns question how many bubbles they can cope with, and now we have the whole squad in South Africa taking a stand. I don’t think the game can go back into full lockdown as it did in england in the summer because the eCB environment that avoided a single positive test was the result of an almost military operation.

The game will have to negotiate a delicate balancing act for the next few months, particularly when england go to Sri Lanka next month and India in February. There they are likely to have to sit in a hotel room for two weeks even before they start.

If any player turns round and says they cannot deal with bubbles any longer, they will have to be respected for that.

Cricket has dealt with this pandemic bloody well and we can applaud them for that, but there are a lot of people who are getting mentally frazzled by all this now.

And if that means we have weaker england teams for this winter and maybe beyond because of rotation, then so be it. There is no easy answer.