Former Indian skipper Rahul Dravid believes that the idea of building a bio-secure environment around teams so that the game can resume is not a viable solution.
The Pakistan Cricket Board recently held a meeting with the officials of England and Wales Cricket Board and during the talks, plans to keep players in a bio-secure environment, from the moment they land in the country, with a two-week quarantine period on arrival were discussed.
“It is a bit unrealistic to have things at the level the ECB is talking about for every series [14-day quarantine period before and after every series],” ESPNcricinfo quoted Dravid as saying in a webinar organised by an NGO.
“ECB is very keen to conduct these couple of series because they have had no other cricket and it is right in the middle of the season, and they’re keen to do this so they are potentially creating the bubble and managing it that way,” he added.
The plans of the ECB and PCB include flying the entire Pakistan squad into the UK on a chartered flight in early July and putting them in one venue as a base, where they all will be quarantined as per the guidelines issued by the UK government.
“In case of the bio-bubble, you do all the testing and quarantine and then on day two of the Test match, what if one player, for example, tests positive? What happens then,” said Dravid.
“The rules, as they stand now, will see the Public Health Department coming in and putting everyone in quarantine, that ends the Test, that series, even though they may have incurred a lot of expense to create that [secure] environment,” he added.
Meanwhile, England has allowed its players to resume training this week as the country plans for a return of international cricket.
England becomes the first nation to commence training for its players after been badly hit by the COVID-19. Currently, all the cricketing action across the world has come to a standstill due to the pandemic.
