England vice-captain Jos Buttler has insisted that he will not travel to Australia for the Ashes series if families are not allowed. The wicketkeeper-batter is hoping for clarity about the Covid-19 protocols for the Australia tour in the next few days.
“Yes, definitely for myself. If I had to do a World Cup and an Ashes – four, five months without seeing my family – I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that,” Buttler was quoted as saying by Skysport.
“We’re still waiting for more information, as soon as possible. Hopefully, in the next few days there’ll be more information. As soon as you get that it makes it easier to know what decision you’re making,” he added.
Buttler, who is yet to play an overseas Ashes, said: “The ECB and Cricket Australia will be working very hard together to make it as good as possible. It’s tough to make a decision when you don’t have all the answers. In Covid times, there is always going to be some sort of question that is difficult to answer.
“It could be changeable, it would be naive not to say so in the times we’re living in, but you want to go there with as many assurances as possible.”
Meanwhile, ECB chairman Ian Watmore said that there has been no set deadline to make a decision, the first week of November is being looked at as the time when some clarity should come.
“There is no simple date it must be decided by, apart from when that plane goes to Australia,” Watmore told the Daily Mail.
“Joe (Root) and the players not involved in the (Twenty20) World Cup will be leaving in the first week of November, so we have until then to change things.
“We are trying to build up a picture, either confident or less confident, of the conditions. There are issues to sort out with Cricket Australia, there are issues for CA to sort out with their government and for the federal government to sort out with state governments. It is a complicated picture.”
