MANCHESTER: Just hours before the start of the opening day of the fifth Test between England and India, Kolkata Knight Riders wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik took to social media to inform play has been called off for the opening day.
The fate of the fifth Test between India and England hangs in balance despite all visiting players returning negative COVID-19 results. Karthik in a series of tweets also asked the “bigger question” that whether the game will happen at all. “Looks like there won’t be any play today guys,” Karthik tweeted. “The bigger question is, will the match happen at all ???? And what does the scoreline for the series look like if not,” he further asked in a tweet.
“NO PLAY TODAY ok Tata bye bye,” Karthik added. Ahead of the fifth and final Test against England, physio Yogesh Parmar tested positive for COVID-19 in Manchester. This had led to Team India’s training session for Thursday afternoon being cancelled. However, there are no COVID-19 related worries in the England camp and Jos Buttler said everything is fine and the hosts are looking forward to the game. “We don’t know too much about it at the moment. It would be naive to speculate on what’s going on.
At the moment we’re fully expecting the game to go ahead and we’re preparing that way so fingers crossed the game will go ahead. Things are fine in our camp and we are looking forward to the game,” said Buttler in a virtual press conference on Thursday. It all started after India head coach Ravi Shastri, bowling coach Bharat Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar returned positive results to their RT-PCR tests during the fourth Test.
They are currently undergoing isolation and can come out only after returning two negative results.
