Alex Carey doesn’t know if he will be captain when Australia goes to Bangladesh later this week after an uncertain 36 hours where the main concern for him and his players was “are we OK?” after a Covid scare in Barbados.
The Aussies will be out for a series win in the final one-day international on Tuesday, just 48 hours after the rescheduled second game had to be postponed following a positive Covid test to a Windies official.
Carey conceded there was uncertainty, as all players are staff were confined to their hotel rooms for “the better part of 36 hours” before they all returned negative tests and the series was able to resume on Sunday.
Those questions included whether the tour to Bangladesh, where there were just under 10,000 new Covid cases on Sunday, would go ahead.
“I guess when you do hear about a positive case inside the bubble your initial instinct is hopefully you don’t have the virus,” said Carey, who will continue as ODI captain after a knee injury forced skipper Aaron Finch to return to Australia.
“And a lot of players, I guess, put trust in the medical staff to go away and do their thing. But naturally in a pandemic, and you hear the news, there’s going to be, I guess, questions and people asking questions and uncertainty.
“Naturally, you have lots of thoughts go through your head: Is the series over? Is the next series done? Are we OK? Is it a false alarm? All questions do enter your mind, and as I said, to be back out in the park 36 hours after that, well do to everyone looking after us.”
Carey said no decisions had yet been made about who would captain the side in Finch’s absence for the five T20s in Bangladesh.
Matthew Wade was the nominated vice-captain during the T20 series against the West Indies before Carey took over for the ODIs.
“I think we’ll get through this series first, jump on the plane in a couple of days time and, yeah, prepare the way we need to prepare,” Carey said.
“Obviously Finchy not playing will throw up some questions about who takes that position in the line-up, let alone who takes a position as skipper.
“There’s been no chat of what the next series looks in terms of our line-up and who’s leading that.”
Ashton Agar could return to the team for the third ODI, which will be played on the same wicket as game two, which was slow and made scoring hard.
“He’s definitely an option, I guess, seeing what the spin impact had not only last game but in the first,” Carey said.
“Yeah, he’s definitely an option and someone we are looking to somehow find a way into that line-up knowing that big Josh Hazlewood is ready to go, (Adam) Zampa is bowling really well. So we’ll get hopefully the right balance.
“Actions will show if we have adapted and are ready for the challenge.”