Recommend participants coming for ICC events to get vaccinated wherever possible, says Allardice

ICC acting CEO Geoff Allardice has recommended all the participants coming for ICC events to get vaccinated wherever possible, but he also added that the apex cricket body cannot influence vaccination at the national level as every country has different criteria. Allardice's recommendation comes as 2021 is slated to host two high-profile ICC tournaments. First, India and New Zealand will take on each other in the final of the ICC World Test Championship at Southampton from June 18-22 and then in October-November, India is slated to host T20 World Cup.

"I think our medical committee and our board are recommending that participants should be vaccinated wherever possible, but I think the dynamic in each country is going to be different, both with the supply of vaccine or the availability of the vaccine, and where sportspeople or international sportspeople might be in the queue to receive those vaccines," the official website of ICC quoted Allardice as saying. "The ICC wouldn't be able to influence anything like that at a national level, but our overall message has been, we recommend that participants coming to our events in the future are vaccinated wherever possible," he added.

India is witnessing a second wave of Covid-19 and the country has reported more than 1 lakh cases in a day three times in the month of April. Fresh COVID-19 cases hit an all-time high in India on Thursday, surpassing the 1.26 lakh mark in a single day. According to the Union Health Ministry, the country recorded 1,26,789 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. With this fresh surge, the total number of infections has reached 1,29,28,574. When asked regarding India hosting T20 World Cup later this year, Allardice said: "We are certainly proceeding on the assumption that the event is going ahead as planned. Yes, we have back-up plans. But at this stage, we haven't activated those plans, because we are preparing to go ahead with the event in India as scheduled. We're working with the BCCI and different elements of that event at the moment, but we do have back-up plans that can be activated when the time's right."

"We're not anywhere near that timeline yet. We've certainly got a number of months to be able to see how the situation is and how cricket events are being run. We've obviously got our World Test Championship final which is coming up in a couple of months too. It's one match and two teams, but it's still got its own challenges. We're proceeding with both as planned at this stage," he added.