The Australian women’s cricket team captain Meg Lanning has said that it would be an interesting situation if any team has to field their support staff during the upcoming Women’s World Cup because of the COVID situation.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced that the matches of the World Cup will go ahead even if a team has only 9 players available on a given day and if needed, the members of the support staff will be allowed to field, however they won’t bat or bowl.
This is quite an unprecedented situation because ICC never made such provisions for the men’s World tournaments that have taken place since the start of the COVID pandemic. No game in a men’s ICC tournament has been played with any of the two teams having only 9 players.
But, the governing body has allowed this for the women’s World Cup and it has been done because of logistical reasons. Since all the women’s teams have turned up with a 15-member playing group for the World Cup, it wouldn’t be logistically possible for them to field 11 players if 5 or 6 are COVID positive at a given point of time.
So, the ICC has decided that the minimum no. of players that a team would be required to field for a game to constitute is 9 and if such a situation occurs, two others from the support staff would be allowed to field.
Women’s World Cup is taking place after a gap of 5 years
Meg Lanning jokingly told the reporters that she has already asked the media manager and the physiotherapist of his team what their prefered fielding positions would be, if they indeed have to take the field. However, the Aussie skipper is hoping that no team ever finds themselves in that kind of a situation and the whole of the women’s World Cup goes without COVID cases.
The last women’s ODI World Cup was played 5 years back in 2017 in England and the Aussies were beaten by India in the semifinal there.
