A “gutted” England Cricket Board (ECB) CEO Tom Harrison on Friday said it was the Indian players’ anxiety over “what might happen” and not the Covid-19 outbreak itself that caused the cancellation of the fifth and final Test here even though all efforts were made to comfort the visitors.
Harrison said the developments of the past couple of days have been devastating and everything necessary was done to convince the Indian players, who were spooked by assistant physio Yogesh Parmar's positive Covid-19 test on Thursday and refused to take the field.
“It’s a really sad day, my heart goes out to fans. We are absolutely gutted. Internationally this game gets astronomical audience. It became clear yesterday around lunch time that there was a problem in terms of the anxiety level in the Indian team.
“It wasn’t an outbreak of Covid, it was a perception of what might happen post the physio testing positive. Over the course of the day, we tried to give as many different assurances that we could to give comfort to the players,” he revealed.
Harrison said “medical people who understand this virus” were brought in to talk to the players on Thursday but they were clear about not playing the match.Their concern was positive tests during the match, which would have led to longer quarantine in England and possible loss of game time at the IPL starting September 19.