Cricket rivals unite on biosecurity plans
Leading cricket medicos from around the world have united to help advance biosecurity plans that will allow the sport to resume after the crisis.
Alex Kountouris has been involved in cricket since 1995, first as physiotherapist of Sri Lanka's national team before returning home to work for Cricket Australia.
Now their head of sports science, Kountouris suggested he has never dealt with anything as complex as mapping a path out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kountouris and respected sports doctor John Orchard have been working overtime to draw up various plans for coming months. The stakes are high; England's board could lose 380 million in 2020.
CA chief Kevin Roberts continued to paint a grim picture of the sport's financial crisis during a video call with staff on Wednesday, although the players' union contacted members on the same day advising cricket's financial position remained "very positive relative to Australia's winter sports".
Kountouris is optimistic CA may be able to resume matches without needing exemptions that have underpinned the NRL and AFL's road to a restart.
The next commitment for Justin Langer's team is a tour of England in July but there is growing expectation that could be shifted to September.
"It'll depend on the stage of the virus ... we'll be guided by government and it's a bit too early to say," Kountouris said. "The first part is getting the sign off from government that we can travel and return ... then from a biosecurity perspective, just seeing what they've got in place and where they're at.
"But I'd be very confident we're all going to have the same stuff. There's that much information being shared. At the moment we want to get training up, that's our priority."
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