Cricket Australia’s CEO Kevin Roberts is fairly confident India’s tour Down Under at the end of the year will go ahead a planned, giving it a 9/10 chance of proceeding.

Like many other tours around the world, India’s much-anticipated battle with Australia in Australia has been under the spotlight in recent times, given the havoc caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The four Test matches, which are due to start in December, will generate a lot of income for the CA board, meaning alternatives could made appropriate to see the tour go ahead as scheduled.

‘I guess there’s no such thing as certainty in today’s world, so I can’t say 10 [out of 10], but I’m going to say nine out of 10,’ Roberts told News Corp.

‘With the variable being, who would know whether we can have crowds? I’d be really surprised if we can’t get the Indian tour away. But I wouldn’t, hand on heart, suggest we’ll have full crowds from the start. We’ll just have to see how that goes.’

India is expected to arrive in Australia as early as October, should the T20 World Cup proceed but if circumstances don’t improve then it could possibly be postponed to the start of next year and could affect the India tour in the process.

Roberts also commented on the position of Australia’s limited-overs tour of England, which was originally scheduled for July.

With the West Indies and Pakistan also set to tour England for red-ball cricket, the expectation is that the Australian tour could be moved to as late as September if deemed safe enough.

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‘I think there’s some chance we could send a team over.Obviously, we won’t jeopardise the safety of the players, but the best test of that is that the West Indian and Pakistan tours of England before we’re due to tour. We hope they go off without a hitch,’ Roberts told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

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