If the Olympics can be postponed, so can the Ashes.

In cricketing terms, England and Australia revolve on a two-year cycle of home and away Ashes series, both aspirationally and financially. Not even lucrative, extended and increasingly regular tours by India to those countries comes close to generating the hype of an Ashes tour. 

But as we have seen with numerous other sporting and cultural events, Australia’s state and federal administrators are disinclined towards any legislation which might make the lives of athletes easier. You may recall, the world’s elite tennis players were required to isolate in hotel room for two weeks before the Australian Open. High-security prisoners are allowed an hour a day of courtyard time but elite athletes weren’t allowed even 30 minutes a day to hit a ball against a wall. 

So it has come as no surprise that England’s cricketers sought urgent talks with their employers about the almost certain reality that they will be required to live in yet another bio-secure bubble – without their families when the Ashes begins at the end of the year. 

Australia is currently only allowing 3000 people per month into the country and there are thousands of citizens and residents who have been waiting up to six months to return home. They would be entirely justified in objecting to the England squad’s families being given priority. But that is not the point. 

The point is that, if Australia’s immigration and quarantine rules and regulations are not changed, the England players would not just be within their ‘rights’ to decline the invitation to tour, they would be positively correct to do so. Irrespective of the Australian team’s refusal to tour South Africa just over a year ago and that of another seven players to decline invitations to the West Indies and Bangladesh in recent months. 

England are committed to short tours of Pakistan and Bangladesh before the T20 World Cup in India after which they head to Australia. Their multi-format players would spend over four months transferring from bubble to bubble without seeing their partners and families. Other than on Skype or Zoom.

Cricket historians remind us that Ashes teams used to be away from home for up to half a year, including sailing time. Fine. And women used to be denied the right to vote, 13-year-old children worked in coal-mines and fathers routinely had very little to do with raising their children. Or anything to do with their children apart from a couple of hours on Sunday. In the 21st century, professional, male cricketers are not just conditioned to be better fathers, they want to be. 

It is a subject I am passionate about having spent the entire duration of my children’s lives covering cricket tours at home and away. I changed nappies whenever I could, cooked meals when I was at home and always brought presents when I returned home. Almost entirely due to the tireless determination and logistical skills of my wife, we managed to have one family holiday in each of the countries I toured, during or after the series. 

The children are grown up now and have some happy memories of the Galle Fort, Goa’s beaches and New Zealand’s Queenstown. But there are, and probably always will be large holes in my relationship with them simply because I wasn’t there when I could have made a difference and they needed me. 

All of England’s top stars still have a burning desire to compete in, and reclaim, the Ashes. They also have alternative and exceptionally lucrative means of earning a living outside of a central contract – not that anyone is suggesting a stand-off between the ECB and the players is looming, or even likely. But it certainly changes the dynamic for players like Joe Root and Jos Buttler when it comes to saying: “I want to play in the Ashes – but not without my wife and young kids.”

My career choice was my own, and it was made early, mostly through good fortune and lucky ‘breaks’ many years before family life was a consideration. I have traveled the (mostly) cricket-playing world for three decades and have a life-time of experiences, memories and friends to show for it. Would I change anything in retrospect? No. Do I have regrets? Yes.  

If I’d had an alternative means to earn a living which meant I wasn’t away from home for so long, even one that provided a vaguely comparable means to a living – like presenting from a studio – would I have considered it? At the time, certainly not. In hindsight, yes. But would it have filled the cracks in the relationship with my children? Who knows. Quite possibly not. But time over again, I wouldn’t take the chance.

Relationships, marriages and families in cricket are no longer routinely headed towards break-ups, divorces and dysfunction. They are still more prone to those hardships than most other professions but times are changing, and fast. Anybody who believes that the sacred Ashes are sacrosanct, and that the players should just ‘get on with it’, has no experience of extended time and life away from home or the consequences it can have. 

If the Olympic Games can be postponed, along with so many other high profile events, then so can the Ashes. Australia is the most regulated country on earth, the only one with three formal levels of government where state and federal conflict is a national sport. The more Sport, Art and Culture appeal for assistance, the more they resist, on principle, it appears.  

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