Australia captain Pat Cummins has been given the green light by the team management and its medical team to return home to Sydney after he was ruled out of the Adelaide Test for being a close contact of a COVID-19 case.
Cummins, who took over as the Test captain after Tim Paine announced on his indefinite break earlier this month, was asked to sit out the second match of the Ashes as he was dining in the same restaurant as the positive coronavirus case on Wednesday night.
Steven Smith donned the captain’s hat just hours before the start of the day-night Test in Adelaide after Cummins got ruled out.
The 28-year old produced a negative test result on Thursday and has been cleared by South Australia’s SA Health to return home by a chartered flight, Cricket Australia said.
“Under the plan approved by SA Health, he will self-drive from isolation and then, with the appropriate PPE and hygiene controls, take a single charter flight.
