Cricketers violate health advice to attend wedding
Stay home until the PCR results are out, health professionals advise. But this is widely ignored.
National cricketers are the latest violators, having attended the wedding of fellow player Sadeera Samarawickrema a few hours after undergoing PCR tests, thereby placing everyone that attended the ceremony at risk.
Tests were carried out on cricketers and support staff shortlisted to tour West Indies. Lahiru Thirimanne and coach Mickey Arthur tested positive and are being treated at a private medical facility run by a hospital chain owned by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Vice President Jayantha Dharmadasa. All first contacts of the pair were asked to self-quarantine.
According to SLC officials, around 30 players are in quarantine of which 15 are first contacts while the others had trained at the national high-performance centre. The first group will undergo two PCR tests on Tuesday and Friday. They will be tested on Monday. If the results are negative, they could be allowed to resume training on Wednesday, says SLC CEO Ashley de Silva.
Doctors attached to SLC confirmed that Arthur and Thirimanne had no contact with each other after they left the bio-secure bubble at the conclusion of the England-Sri Lanka Test series last month. It is not clear how they caught the virus.
This has put Sri Lanka’s tour of West Indies in jeopardy with officials saying they are exploring all options including playing a shorter tour. Sri Lanka were to play two Tests, three ODI and T20 games in the Caribbean.
“Given the current scenario, we cannot make the tour as scheduled but are exploring all options including playing a shortened tour,” said de Silva.
Sri Lanka’s international cricket calendar was massively hampered by the current pandemic where series after series was cancelled. However, after successfully hosting the LPL, Sri Lanka toured South Africa in December, the team’s first international appearance since March last year, and played England at home last month. A pool of 35 players were in training when these two positive cases forced SLC to take swift action to suspend squad training.