Ca pulling out all stops to ensure india 'enjoy' australia tour

Cricket Australia are planning to pull out all stops to make sure that the Indian team gets to "enjoy rather than having to endure" their two-month tour. Virat Kohli & Co

landed in Sydney on Thursday (November 12) evening, two days after the IPL final. The 32-member squad along with the support staff will spend their first two weeks Down Under in quarantine

though they'll be allowed to train and go through their routines. Upon completion of those 14 days, the Indians are likely to be allowed a significant amount of freedom to move around.

The extent of that freedom though is likely to vary as they travel interstate with some centres like Adelaide and Melbourne still expected to enforce relatively stricter measures. The Indian

contingent along with the Australian players and coaches who were in the IPL arrived at the hotel together in four separate buses. They were escorted and greeted there by army and police

personnel along with the hotel security staff. The group included the wives and kids of R Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane. Jetlagged yet relieved after a 15-hour long flight

from Dubai, they will now quarantine in their respective rooms while having to undergo their first Covid-19 tests on Friday (November 13). The first few days of their stay in Sydney are

expected to be about rest and recuperation with a lot of measures in place to ensure their health and safety. They include not being allowed to enter anyone else's room in the hotel.

This protocol is likely to be in place for the entirety of their quarantine period. Some other leniencies and freedoms within the hotel's confines are expected to come about once

everyone on tour has cleared their initial Covid-19 tests without a single positive case. These will include ordering Uber Eats or getting any other form of food delivery. For now, they can

indulge in room service within the hotel though they'll have to collect and leave their plates at the door. They will also only be provided with wooden cutlery. The Indians are expected

to start training post Saturday (November 14) and there'll be no restriction on how many of them can train together. It's learnt that the message from the team management to the

players is to follow every health safety protocol in place diligently without any slip-ups to ensure that they are in a position to move around a bit more freely once the quarantine period

concludes a day before the first ODI on November 27 at the SCG. The Australian players within the bubble, including Aaron Finch, Steve Smith, David Warner and Pat Cummins, met on a Zoom call

on Friday afternoon with the rest of their teammates and the coaching staff led by Justin Langer. Finch & Co are expected to resume training next week under the watchful eyes of

assistant coaches Andrew McDonald and Sridharan Sriram with Ricky Ponting also helping out. CA meanwhile are pleased with having managed to come up with a "best case" scenario

alongside the New South Wales government for the Indian team. It's likely that there might have been stricter quarantine restrictions in place if the tour had started in Queensland like

it'd seemed it would for a long while before Sydney entered the fray to save the day. So having now safely brought the Indians and the Aussies in the IPL over to Sydney, the focus for

those in-charge of organising the tour within CA is to make sure that everyone stays safe and out of harm's way for the next two months. It still remains unclear just how free the

Indian players, coaches and families would be to move around the cities following the 14-day quarantine. For starters, they are expected to shift out of their quarantine hotel and move into

one that's closer to the city and one that they're used to staying in. The CA has been developing the protocols alongside Dr Cassy Workman, who's an infectious diseases expert

and was an advisor for the biosecurity plan that the National Rugby League (NRL) had in place. "We need to clearly make sure that from a biosecurity perspective, we are minimising the

risk. That said, at this time, Australia is very fortunate to be one of the safest places in the world. So, once they're clear through their quarantine, we've got measures in place

which are risk-weighted to ensure that everyone is kept safe, but players will enjoy a level of freedom in Australia and those are very well documented between CA and the BCCI," is how

CA's interim CEO Nick Hockley had explained the measures that could be in place post the quarantine period. "Once people have completed their 14-day quarantine and been cleared by

NSW health they are free to move around NSW," is what Stuart Ayres, NSW's tourism minister who was instrumental in getting the sanctions, had said two weeks ago when the schedule

was finally confirmed. The Indian team management for now is confident that they'll be allowed to move about more freely once the series is officially underway. The likely restrictions

though are expected to be similar to those that the players in the Sheffield Shield hub in Adelaide had to contend with. That could mean being able to get takeaways and even dining in at

venues which provide outdoor seating but not being able to enter cafes, restaurants and pubs. With these too, the final outcome will depend on the respective state governments and how they

see it fit to enforce regulations in order to keep everyone safe. While the first Sydney leg of the tour seems to have taken some definite shape, the logistics of the Indian team's

visits to other states continue to be monitored and worked out. Over in Adelaide, it's still not clear whether Virat Kohli & Co will be staying at the Adelaide Oval Hotel which

opened in September and has already housed a few of the Australian players who returned from the tour of England. Not to forget more on-field matters like if the SACA needs to arrange for

net bowlers for the visitors when they land here later next month. Importantly, what is learnt so far is that the Indian team management is very happy with the way they've been taken

care of ever since they landed in Sydney, whether it be at the airport or upon their arrival at the hotel. And that for now they're more than happy to just wear their jet lags off.