South Africa lodges official complaint against Cricket Australia

Cricket South Africa lodged a formal complaint with the International Cricket Council over Cricket Australia's decision to indefinitely postpone next month's three-match Test series.

In a letter sent by acting CEO Pholetsi Moseki, CSA is invoking both the World Test Championship (WTC) and the FTP agreement terms in search of points on the WTC table, as well as financial compensation from CA, reported ESPNCricinfo.

It has asked the ICC to look into whether CA's cancellation amounts to acceptable or unacceptable non-compliance as per the WTC terms, bearing in mind that the series cannot be rescheduled before the end of the WTC window, which is April 30, 2021.

It also wants the ICC to obtain a report on the health situation in South Africa to determine if Australia breached the terms by not travelling, the report added.

As per the ICC's FTP agreement, member countries are obliged to fulfil their fixtures unless there are circumstances which prevent them from doing so, including government instruction.

The Australian board had said that travelling from Australia to South Africa at this current time would have had an unacceptable level of health and safety risk to the visiting players.

Earlier, South Africa head coach Mark Boucher had said that it was disappointing to see Australia postpone the three-match Test series as all demands of Cricket Australia were adhered to.

Cricket Australia said the team would not travel on the advice of medical experts, despite South Africa’s government lifting a number COVID-19 restrictions and a sharp decrease in the number of cases in the country in recent weeks.