CSA woes over burst bubble highlights professionalism of the ECB - Chris Waters

So much so, one is not quite sure whether one would rather have ECB chief executive Tom Harrison running the country and Prime Minister Boris Johnson running the ECB, or the current status quo.

On second thoughts, “Bo-Jo” did describe the cricket ball as “a natural vector of disease” during the summer, so let’s stick with Harrison at ECB Towers.

Flippancy aside, credit must go where credit is due.

That Harrison and the ECB did a remarkable job in, firstly, getting on a full programme of international cricket during the English summer (five men’s/women’s teams, 23 matches, and the best part of 1,000 Covid tests with no positive results) was already known.

Now it looks even more remarkable – and something of a minor miracle – given the cancellation of the one-day series in South Africa, whose cricket board, in contrast, faces huge questions about its failure to manage a much smaller challenge after several breaches of its supposedly secure biosecure bubble.

The facts, as we know them, are broadly these:

Two South Africa players tested positive for Covid before the start of the T20 series that preceded the one-dayers – one inside the bubble, one before entering it.

Those players were put into isolation, and the three games proceeded as planned, England winning 3-0.

Another South Africa player tested positive straight after the series, followed by two staff at The Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town, one of whom had responsibility for the England party and had been in the bubble with them since November 16.

Hotel staff had been on-site throughout, leading to much perplexment among South African medics as to how these breaches occurred, and then two unnamed members of the touring party returned “unconfirmed positives”, causing a further delay to the three-match one-day series and then, yesterday, its abandonment.

England were last night awaiting ratification of their positive test results, which they suspect to be so-called false positives due to the high levels of “viral load”.

It almost goes without saying, does it not, that both individuals are, in any case, asymptomatic.

Of course, with player considerations paramount, and the players themselves uneasy about remaining in a bubble that has clearly burst, the ECB and CSA (Cricket South Africa) predictably called the whole thing off.

Down the tube, as a result, goes roughly £1.5m in broadcasting revenue for CSA, and yet the damage to it goes far beyond the financial implications.

In contrast to the ECB, which overcame significant logistical challenges to put in place a watertight plan that was threatened only when fast bowler Jofra Archer decided that he could do what he liked and make an unsolicited trip to his home in Brighton, CSA has lost further credibility at a time when it is riven with concerns about its financial management and general integrity.

The board was in crisis long before England arrived, and the tourists have been dissatisfied with the protocols that CSA put in place for the tour – concerns that have borne fruit.

Significant doubts must now attend the proposed imminent visits of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia to South Africa, who will have to move heaven and earth – and quite possibly Table Mountain – to convince those countries that their players will be protected in the bubble.

On the face of it, trying to persuade them of this might be a bit like a prison trying to persuade government officials that the inmates will not escape from its confines despite several cases of exactly that happening.

“Oh, but it will be completely different next time… honest, guv.”

All of which is of fleeting concern to the ECB, at least until the series is rescheduled, by which time a vaccine might have come to everyone’s rescue.

Until then, CSA’s handling of the affair merely highlights the professional way in which Tom Harrison and the ECB led English cricket through as challenging a summer as it has known.