Melbourne [Australia]: Cricket Australia on Tuesday released an official statement cancelling the Qantas Tour of South Africa citing safety risk to the players and support staff.
“Due to the public health situation in South Africa, which includes a second wave and new variant of the virus, and following extensive due diligence with medical experts, it has become clear that travelling 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”, said Cricket Australia in an official statement.
“We acknowledge the significant amount of work by CSA in planning for the tour, during which we made it clear that CA was prepared to take on additional cost and effort to make the series happen”, read the statement.
They further added that despite best efforts to agree to a biosecurity plan, the risks are simply too great 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”, concluded the statement.
The Qantas tour of South Africa was scheduled for February and March.
