Australian pace bowler Pat Cummins feels “lucky” that cricket is not a contact sport and his comments came amidst the COVID-19 pandemic which has wreaked havoc not only on the lives of people but also on the sporting events. Australia and New Zealand played the first One Day International game of the three-match series in an empty stadium on Friday in between the virus outbreak which has so far claimed more than 5000 lives.

“We’re lucky in cricket that it’s not a contact sport, you can try and avoid getting too close to each other so no one really changed too much,” Pat Cummins was quoted as saying in cricket.au.com. “We were pretty clear on making sure nothing really affected the integrity of how we actually played and not changing anything about how we normally go about the game.”

Australia beat New Zealand by 71 runs in the first ODI on Friday before the second and third games were postponed due to the effect of the coronavirus that has taken over 5000 deaths so far and also infecting more than 1,30,000 people across the globe. The three T20 Internationals between Australia and New Zealand in New Zealand were also postponed as of now as the Kiwis have returned home.

Read here: VVS Laxman Backs the Idea of Cancelling India-South Africa Series

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, multiple series got cancelled and also postponed for the time being which included the Indian Premier League also as it has been pushed back by a fortnight. The 2020 IPL will begin from April 15 as per the BCCI decided now. Former India batsman VVS Laxman said that although the decision was hard to call off the ODI series between India and South Africa, it was definitely a right call due to the outbreak of the COVID-19. After the first ODI in Dharamsala was abandoned due to rain, BCCI cancelled both the remaining games of the series.