£40M FIGHT AFTER TEST IS AXED
No-show hits spectators in pocket and damages loyalty
ENGLAND cricket chiefs are locked in a £40million battle after India forced the cancellation of the fifth Test over mental health concerns.
That is how the ECB are describing the Covid fears expressed by an
Indian playing group that returned a full set of negative results the day before the game was supposed to take place.
The Indian players remained anxious about their situation after a team masseur became the fourth member of their support staff to test positive following head coach Ravi Shastri and two others last week.
As a result, the BCCI told their counterparts that they would not be in a position to fulfil the fixture at the 11th hour, when many of the 22,000 fans were already on their way to the ground. The ECB tried
THE ENGLAND and Wales Cricket Board are licking their wounds after a cancelled Test match, but they will be all right.
Their players are gutted they could not finish the series, something they will surely think about as some of them join their Indian counterparts on flights to the UAE this week instead.
They will all move on quickly. The next game is always round the corner.
But if your one game, or one day of Test cricket was due to be at Old Trafford this week after waiting two years for it to arrive, knowing it will be two years until the next one, this cancellation is not so easy to get over.
In the end, trying to stage a full set of 19 men’s international fixtures across 47 days, in 10 venues against four different teams during a global pandemic was too much to ask. There were warning signs earlier in the summer when
England’s entire ODI squad had to be replaced at the drop of a hat as a Covid outbreak ran through the dressing room.
Ben Stokes and others saved the day then, but this time at Old Trafford, with the Test series on the line, India decided they did not want to play with the threat of Covid hanging over them with the latest non-playing member of their tour party testing positive.
You might wonder why Covid was not a problem for them when Rishabh Pant, left, and a trainer contracted it in July, or when three other members of their support staff got it last week.
For some reason nine days out from the IPL it has become a major issue. But England can have absolutely no complaints about their decision.There is no moral high ground here. They acquiesced to their players’ demands in South Africa last year and called off a three-match ODI series when they were spooked by a barman in their hotel contracting the virus. The major difference this time, though, is that in South Africa it was behind closed doors and it did not inconvenience too many people, unlike here.
As one looked out yesterday over an empty Old Trafford that should have been alive with the sound of 22,000 fans, the only sympathy one could muster was for them.
Sold out for the first three days and nearly so on day four, cricket lovers from across the country had spent their hard-earned money on tickets and everything else to go with it.
The travel, the replica shirts, the accommodation – which is at a skyhigh premium in Manchester this weekend with the return of Cristiano Ronaldo and New Order playing.
Then there would have been vendors and event staff who have been starved of work and income in this space for 18 months.
Those fans who should have been at Old Trafford are the lifeblood of the game. It is their ticket money the ECB are after. It is their subscriptions Sky Sports are after. It is the merchandise the IPL and Hundred teams want to sell them.
They have been robbed.