Tour at risk following Moeen’s positive test

ENGLAND’S cricketers were ‘bracing themselves’ last night after all-rounder Moeen Ali tested positive for Covid-19, putting in jeopardy the tour of Sri Lanka. Moeen immediately entered ten days of self-isolation, while Chris Woakes will also remain in his hotel room for a minimum of seven days after sharing a car with the spin bowler to Heathrow airport last week. The entire 23-man squad, plus backroom staff, were due to be tested again this morning and once more on Thursday — by which time Moeen (right) will have been moved to separate accommodation in Galle, the venue for the two-Test series starting next week. Nerves were already frayed after England’s recent mid-tour postponement in South Africa and Moeen came into contact with several team-mates during the trip to Sri Lanka on Saturday, although the players were socially distanced on their charter flight. It won’t need many more positive test results before talk turns to sending players home yet again. If that happens, it would be the third trip in succession to be interrupted by the pandemic, and the second in less than a year in Sri Lanka.

As the squad remained in strict isolation in their hotel rooms in Hambantota, a couple of hours’ drive east of Galle along the island’s south coast, there was bewilderment as to how Moeen — who seems certain to miss the first Test on January 14 — caught the virus. All the players returned negative tests in the UK last Thursday and were initially told by Sri Lankan authorities that the lateral-flow tests — which yield quick results — taken at Hambantota airport shortly after arrival on Sunday were negative, too. It was only after medics examined the results of the more invasive PCR swab tests that Moeen was declared positive. Training was put back a day to tomorrow, but with the tour’s future potentially resting on the results of today’s batch of testing, a dressing-room source said: ‘We are bracing ourselves.’ England picked seven standby players to go with the firstchoice 16, so no others will be called up for now. For Moeen, who had been looking to make his Test return after almost 18 months out of the side, the timing could hardly be crueller.