The issue that divides the nation: Should Pat Cummins have been allowed to play in the second Ashes Test?

A brief chat with someone who had Covid has wiped Pat Cummins out of the Adelaide Test. Inevitable or overkill? Two of our resident cricket tragics debate the issue. Poll: Have your say.

Cricket tragics Caleb Bond (an Aussie) and Steve Rice (an Englishman) argue the toss on whether Pat Cummins should have been allowed to play in the Adelaide Test.

YES – SAYS CALEB BOND

If Australia loses the Adelaide Test, you may well be able to blame it on one person – Nicola Spurrier.

Pat Cummins is likely to be deemed a “close contact” of a Covid case because he had the misfortune of sitting at a different table in the same restaurant as someone who was positive.

Under SA’s outdated and ridiculously strict contact rules, that would put him in isolation for seven days – even if he repeatedly tests negative.

Cummins is fully vaccinated. As a cricketer, he is tested regularly. He will have been tested last night and again this morning.

He should be able to take a rapid antigen test and be on the field this afternoon if he tests negative – but that practice is currently prohibited in SA.

Despite the fact rapid tests are readily available and accepted interstate, our chief public health officer has banned them here because – get this – there’s not enough Covid in SA.

And if Cummins were interstate – say Victoria for the Boxing Day Test – he wouldn’t have to deal with this nonsense in the first place.

In Victoria, you have household contacts and social contacts. Those who live with an infectious person rightly have to isolate.

A social contact – which is someone who has personally spent time with a case and not just sat in the same restaurant – simply gets tested and goes about life when they come back negative.

Meanwhile, in SA, we lock up people who we know do not have Covid.

It will ruin Christmas for many families this year. And now it may well ruin our Ashes chances.

Rice v Bond have their say on whether Pat Cummins should play.

NO – SAYS STEVE RICE

Australia was left with no choice but to rule out Patrick Cummins from the Adelaide day-night Ashes Test against England.

For full disclosure, I am an England fan but this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with sporting loyalties.

I, along supporters from both countries, want to see the world’s best Test match bowler live. South Australians have been robbed of watching their new national hero.

But the Covid pandemic does not discriminate. It does not matter if you are the Australian cricket captain, a sole trader, a hospitality worker or a single parent.

The trace, test, isolate and quarantine rules established by SA Health, while harsh in comparison to NSW and Victoria, have to remain consistent and fair for everyone.

Allowing Cummins, who has been deemed a close contact and therefore required to quarantine for seven days, to take to the field after a negative PCR test is fraught with danger.

While the full facts of his exposure are not yet known, there is no guarantee he will not test positive over the next seven days and potentially expose other players from both teams.

There are short-term ramifications over how it would affect the result of the match. Would Australia have to forfeit? Would England agree to having the match replayed?

If a player were to test positive at any point from Thursday, they would automatically miss the Boxing Day Test at the MCG while in quarantine for 14 days.

But this would pale into insignificance compared with the backlash from everyday South Australians who have lived through almost two years of coronavirus restrictions.

There are still potentially hundreds of people who risk being in quarantine over Christmas because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time through no fault of their own.

Sport has provided an escape from reality for Australians through numerous lockdowns but the one rule for sportspeople and one for everyone else has caused significant distress.

But SA Health could not afford to allow Cummins a free pass while imposing various restrictions on the citizens of this state.

There will be debate over whether Cummins should have been at a restaurant the night before a Test match.

Players have lived in a bubble for a long time to provide us entertainment, but those decisions have consequences in this scary new world and that applies to all of us.

These are the rules, whether you agree with them or not.