English cricket breathed a sigh of relief with news that India’s players have cleared an emergency round of Covid-19 testing and Friday’s fifth Test at Old Trafford should go ahead as planned.
Virat Kohli’s tourists, who sit 2-1 up with one to play, looking to secure their first series win in England since 2007, were forced to remain in their hotel rooms on Thursday and cancel their scheduled training session after a fourth member of their backroom staff tested positive for the virus.
The subsequent test results are understood to have indicated no further spread among the squad, however, thus avoiding a potentially damaging cancellation that would have challenged the currently amicable relationship between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
India’s outbreak began when Ravi Shastri, the head coach, tested positive last weekend during his side’s 157-run victory at the Oval, with two of his assistants – bowling coach Bharat Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar – then shown to have contracted the virus also.
However, the emergence of a fourth case had plunged the series finale in Manchester into doubt, with players on both sides set to depart on Wednesday and head to the United Arab Emirates for the second half of the postponed Indian Premier League that starts on 19 September.
While all members of India’s touring party are believed to be double vaccinated, further positive cases could still delay this departure or present a possible threat to the resumption of a tournament worth £400m per year to the BCCI in TV money.
Cancelling the match would come at a cost to the ECB too, with each Test worth £20m in domestic broadcast money alone. That figure swells when ticket sales for the 21,000-capacity Old Trafford are factored in, plus sponsorship deals and money from the governing body’s TV deal with Sony in India.
After the full round of negative test results from India’s players, ECB officials were confident that the fifth Test would proceed as planned and relieved after relaxing the biosecure measures for both teams as the summer has gone on.
That said, with the backroom staff member in question understood to have treated a number of recent injuries in India’s squad, there is still a lingering possibility of further cases developing during the match.
The ECB would have struggled to mount a serious complaint had India decided against completing the series this summer, with England’s players having forced the postponement of three ODIs in South Africa last December due to an outbreak of Covid in the team hotel.
There were admittedly different circumstances, with players not vaccinated at that stage and, jaded after a year of bubble life, collectively stressed by the prospect of being stuck in Cape Town and unable to join family for Christmas.
India’s players could easily have cited that tour as a precedent, however, having been on the road since 3 June when they first arrived in the UK before the World Test Championship final against New Zealand.
While India did not train on Thursday, England underwent a full session as they look to level the series and prevent this summer becoming their worst in terms of results since 1999. So far Joe Root’s side have won one Test match this season, having previously fallen to a 1-0 defeat to New Zealand in June.