The International Cricket Council (ICC) has alleviated the fears of quite a few cricketers who are taking the field for the T20 World Cup by confirming that players who have tested positive for COVID-19 are not restricted from playing. Along with isolation, testing is not to be considered mandatory, marking the T20 World Cup 2022 as the first sporting tournament to be played without any Covid restrictions.
The physical state of players who test positive will be determined as ”appropriate” to play or not by doctors on the teams. Frequent RT PCR tests will be conducted on them to determine
the same. Teams will also still be permitted to make changes to the squad if a player were to test positive. Players can be replaced based on such information but that call purely remains with the team. New members of the team can also join in a faster fashion, as there are no quarantine requirements. The player will also need to “follow protocols from the biosecurity advisory group like wearing masks and maintaining distance from his teammates". The requirements though are not mandated, so going through with any or all of these is ultimately a decision in the hands of the team.
Players may find this move to be a symbol of a shift back to how cricket was once played, as opposed to the “bio-bubbles” that they huddled in to play their game over the past two or so years. The lifting of the restrictions may also increase morale, allow players to focus solely on their play, and let go of any hurdles these restrictions may bring to their strategies.
This removal of restrictions follows the event of an infected player taking the field, namely Tahlia McGrath, Australia’s women’s team’s all-rounder in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games final against India in August of this year. McGrath watched the game from a distance as she sat away from her teammates while sporting a mask, and went on to participate in a gold medal-winning match. This has been noted as an incident of irony, as Australia happens to be the country that banned star tennis player Novak Djokovic from playing at the Australian Open this year, as he refused to get vaccinated.
Even in a general sense, Australia has been one of the strictest countries with regard to the pandemic, in turn being one of the countries with the least recorded Covid cases in the world. Their general Covid restrictions were only lifted about a week ago. This decision comes as a hallmark of Australia’s new, softer approach towards the Coronavirus and its many variants that are still rampant around the world.
It seems that it is the beginning of a restriction-free future to come.
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