COVID-19: ICC confident WTC final will go ahead as planned in June in UK

India skipper Virat Kohli. Pic/AFP

The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday said it is confident the World Test Championship (WTC) final between India and New Zealand will go ahead as planned in Southampton in June. This after UK put India to its travel "red list" on a precautionary basis after reporting 103 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in India.

The final of the WTC is to be played in a bio-secure bubble at the Hampshire Bowl in Southampton. The final is slated to start on June 18 and continue till June 22 with June 23 kept as the reserve day.

"We are currently discussing with the UK Government the impact of countries being on the 'red list'. The ECB and other Members have demonstrated how we can stage international cricket safely in the middle of a pandemic and we are confident that we can continue to do that and that the World Test Championship Final will go ahead as planned in June in the UK," ICC said in a statement via Twitter.

New Zealand was the first team to make the ICC World Test Championship final and they were joined by India following Virat Kohli and boys' series win over England.

Speaking in the parliament, UK health secretary Matt Hancock said UK has put in place the new variant assessment platform allowing any country in the world to use their genomic sequencing capability if they want to sequence positive cases in order to discover what is happening in their countries.

"We have recently seen a new variant first identified in India. We have now detected 103 cases of this variant," Hancock said.

"On a precautionary basis, we have made the difficult but vital decision to add India to the Red List. This means anyone who is not the UK or Irish resident or a British citizen cannot enter the UK if they've been in India in the previous 10 days," he added.

Hancock also said that UK and Irish residents and British citizens who have been in India in the past 10 days before their arrival will need to complete hotel quarantine for 10 days from the time of arrival. The rules come into force at 4 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Friday, Hancock said.

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