Australia to reschedule SA tour ‘asap’

Australia will look to reschedule its postponed tour of SA “as soon as possible” but only if the health situation and calendar allow, Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley said.

Australia pulled out of the three-Test tour slated for MarchApril citing an “unacceptable level of health and safety risk to players, support staff and the community”.

The move angered the Cricket SA board, which said it had incurred significant costs in meeting Australia’s safety demands and wrote to the International Cricket Council (ICC) seeking redress. Hockley said the “first step” to mending the board’s relationship with Cricket SA is to come to a resolution with revised dates.

“We would like to reschedule it as soon as possible, providing it is safe to do so, and there is time available in the calendar,” he told Nine Network-owned newspapers. “Now, that’s not a simple task. Through the pandemic and quarantine periods there is a lot of cricket that has been rescheduled.

“But we’re right in the middle of constructive discussions and hopefully those discussions will be resolved soon.”

Australia pulled out of a Test tour of Bangladesh in 2020 along with white-ball tours of New Zealand and Zimbabwe due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The board also called off a home Test match against Afghanistan last summer along with a home T20 series against West Indies which was to have been a warm-up for the postponed

Twenty20 World Cup. Despite the pandemic, Australia managed to tour England for whiteball matches in 2020 and hosted the game’s main money-spinning heavyweight India in four Tests and two limited-overs series over the home summer.

SA’s director of cricket Graeme Smith warned the ICC in February that smaller member nations must have their fair share of Test tours against the Big Three of India, England and Australia or the game could become dominated by Twenty20 leagues.