Four Edinburgh cricket clubs and match officials piloted COVID-19 lateral flow testing ahead of friendly matches on Saturday as Cricket Scotland look at ways of ensuring the club game remains as safe as possible over the summer.
Carlton, Grange, Heriots and Watsonians first teams all the joined the initiative with first team players and all match officials testing ahead of their matches to ensure that the matches, were as safe as possible for all involved, including Scotland players heading for the series in the Netherlands,
With lateral flow tests now freely available for all in Scotland it was an easy process for players and officials to test ahead of the game. There were no positive tests providing reassurance that the games could be played in the safest possible environment.
Cricket Scotland CEO Gus Mackay thanked the four clubs for taking part; “We’re grateful to Carlton, Grange, Heriots and Watsonians for taking part in the COVID-19 testing ahead of the games on Saturday. It gave us great resassurance that all the players and officials would be kept safe and that there was no risk to Scotland players travelling to the Netherlands this week.
“With lateral flow tests now being freely available to everyone in Scotland we hope that other clubs will consider this an option to give another layer of protection against COVID-19 for everyone playing cricket in Scotland this summer. While we know that cricket can be played safely, we believe that anything we can do as a sport to contribute to stopping the spread is a positive step and I’d encourage all clubs to look at introducing testing as the season gets underway this weekend.”
