A day soon after 5 Indian players — Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant, Shubman Gill, Navdeep Saini and Prithvi Shaw — came beneath fire for allegedly breaching COVID-19 protocols in Australia, a report of Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya violating the similar guidelines and going to a infant shop emerged.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, Kohli and Pandya had visited a infant shop on December 7 with no a mask. The go to to the retailer was in breach of Cricket Australia’s biosecurity restrictions on players, SMH quoted a Cricket Australia official as saying.
Now, Nathan Pongrass — the owner of Baby Village, Bondi Junction– has rubbished the report and quashed the baseless allegations. He mentioned that each Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya maintained sufficient distance and the employees at the retailer had been prevented from touching or shaking hands with the star players, reported India Today.
Pongrass additional added that masks had been not a popular function in the 1st week of December as the quantity of coronavirus situations in New South Wales was negligible. Reportedly, masks had been produced compulsory at indoor venues like gaming rooms, hair salons and shops in New South Wales on January 3 soon after a fresh outbreak in mid-December in Sydney’s Northern Beaches region.
“I don’t think they wore masks. As I said before, at that time, there weren’t many new cases in New South Wales. If you looked through the streets, one in 50 people were wearing masks. Older people were wearing and even some pregnant ladies weren’t wearing masks in Sydney,” Pongrass told Australian journalist Norman Kochannek.
Pongrass added that the cricketers had been type sufficient to take a couple of pictures with the employees. However, they had been not permitted to touch or shake hands with them. “We had a very positive experience. It’s really a shame what has happened in the media because of it,” Pongrass added.
Meanwhile, the third Test in between India and Australia will be played at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) from Thursday.