Despite the insistence by Cricket Australia’s chief executive Nick Hockley that everything is fine and that more stringent Covid protocols will keep the tour safe, it might already be too late. It necessitated an entirely new squad to be selected to face Pakistan, with Ben Stokes returning early from his finger injury to captain the side. There could very well be players on the MCG turf pushing their bodies to the physical limit while having covid. But this was a risk both the England team and Cricket Australia were willing to take and rightly so. England have pulled out of tours to Sri Lanka and South Africa for less, but when covid was still a relative unknown.

Source: Daily Mirror December 27, 2021 11:53 UTC