The veteran Indian spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin will not be playing for County cricket club Yorkshire this season after the English county announced on Monday they were canceling their overseas player contracts for the 2020 campaign. However, they also clarified that the step has been taken after taking mutual consent following the coronavirus outbreak.
Off-spinner Ashwin and South Africa slow left-armer Keshav Maharaj were expected to be the frontline spinner in the first-class County Championship, with West Indies’ batsman Nicholas Pooran heading to Headingley for the Twenty20 Blast. But with the start of the English season delayed until July 1 at the earliest, and several rounds of Championship matches have been canceled, Yorkshire has decided it no longer makes cricket or economic sense to employ overseas players this year.
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Yorkshire is also one of a number of counties trying to keep costs down by putting cricketers on furlough as part of the British government’s coronavirus job retention scheme.
Talking about the same, Yorkshire director of cricket Martyn Moxon said, “We have been in regular contact with the players and their agents throughout this COVID pandemic. They have been extremely professional and appreciate the uncertainty facing counties at present.”
Maharaj impressed for Yorkshire last year, taking 38 Championship wickets in five matches. Yorkshire’s announcement follows similar statements confirming Australia’s Peter Siddle (Essex), Nathan Lyon (Hampshire), and Glenn Maxwell and James Faulkner (both Lancashire) will be among overseas players who will not be playing county cricket this season.
Currently, India is going through a nationwide lockdown. Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus positive patients in India went past 28100 with almost 890 people losing their lives on Tuesday, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
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The entire world is slowly moving towards a lockdown due to the scare of the ever-escalating situation concerning the World Health Organisation-recognized pandemic that is the Coronavirus. Everything- schools, colleges, airports, railway stations, gyms, sporting events, movies, offices- have been put under lockdown as the world continues to self-isolate in order to control the pandemic.
