The sight of Joe Root providing throwdowns at England nets in Sydney, forced into a supporting role while coaches were dropping like flies around him, summed up the futility of this sorry Ashes exercise. It is time to call the whole thing off and come home.
More positive Covid tests in the camp, more close contacts forced into isolation and, most worryingly, two local net bowlers hurriedly abandoning their service with England when their results came back positive, painted a picture of grim chaos in Sydney.
This has long since stopped being the biggest series in Test cricket — in truth, it was never going to be that under current circumstances.
Coaches are dropping like flies with Chris Silverwood among those testing positive for Covid
Only Travis Head, as yet, has tested positive among the two playing squads but surely it is only a matter of time. The series is over anyway for goodness sake. Common sense should prevail and the Ashes be awarded to Australia today by a final result of 3-0.
But when did common sense ever come into anything where cricket administrators and money are concerned? The sensible option would have been to postpone the Ashes for a year before England had even set foot in Australia and been forced into 14 days of isolation by the nonsensical decision to persist with holding the first Test in Brisbane.
A postponement, of course, would have proved near-impossible, with greedy boards still trying to squeeze every last drop of international cricket into an already crammed schedule, and with next winter for England already looking like a navigational challenge more suited to Phileas Fogg rather than a group of cricketers.
Only Travis Head has tested positive from the playing squads but it's only a matter of time before more go into isolation
Australia’s strict approach to Covid and, crucially, the differing rules in differing states with Queensland among the strictest, meant this was always going to be worse than the tours to Sri Lanka and South Africa that England had abandoned during the pandemic.
This experience was always going to be a case of everyone involved threatened with quarantining their way around Australia. And
