Cricket South Africa writes to the International Cricket Council seeking financial redress l after Australia withdraw from the three-Test tour due to coronavirus concerns; Cricket Australia interim CEO says “unacceptable” level of risk led to decision.

Cricket Australia (CA) said the team would not travel on the advice of medical experts, despite South Africa’s government lifting a number of COVID-19 restrictions and a sharp decrease in the number of cases in the country in recent weeks.

CSA said its disappointment arose from the fact that they had accepted every safety demand of the tourists, and that they were not consulted by the visitors before the unilateral decision was made not to tour.

“There’s got to be some understanding of how we manage the impact to less-wealthy nations,” Stavros Nicolaou, the chairman of CSA’s interim board said.

“Unilateral decisions of this nature are punitive to less-wealthy cricket-playing nations and there has to be some discussion around redress.”

CA interim chief executive Nick Hockley defended the decision to postpone the South Africa trip, saying the “weight of medical advice and our duty of care to players and staff meant we were really left with no alternative”.