SYDNEY: The much-awaited Australia tour of South Africa has been postponed due to the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus in the rainbow nation, Cricket Australia said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Australian side was scheduled to fly out this month for a three-Test series in March, but Cricket Australia’s interim chief executive Nick Hockley said it had no choice but to postpone the trip due to the South African epidemic.
“Following extensive due diligence with medical experts, it has become clear that traveling from Australia to South Africa at this current time poses an unacceptable level of health and safety risk to our players, support staff and the community,” Hockley said in a statement.
He further said, “This decision has not been made lightly and we are extremely disappointed, especially given the importance of continuing international cricket at this time.”
“We look forward to playing the series against CSA at a date to be confirmed in due course and we send CSA and the people of South Africa our very best wishes for a successful rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine and a return to normality soon,” he added.
With almost 1.5 million detected infections and more than 44,000 fatalities, South Africa has the highest number of cases and deaths in the continent. Since late last year, it has been battling a more transmissible variant of the virus.
