Another Covid positive test for Mike Hussey

Mike Hussey tests positive again after hopes were raised by a negative swab last week.

Michael Hussey.

Michael Hussey has had a setback in his battle with COVID, with a third test coming back positive.

The former Australian batsman had appeared to be on the road to recovery when he tested negative on Friday.

The Chennai Super Kings batting coach came down with the virus two days after it was revealed three other staff members of the franchise were positive.

Hussey is understood to have sat next to one of the infected assistants on a bus.

The majority of the Australians who were at the IPL flew to the Maldives when the tournament was postponed and are unable to return home until after the government travel ban lifts on May 15.

The Australians, staying in a resort in the island nation in the Indian Ocean, were alarmed when they were woken by an enormous explosion before 6am on Sunday morning.

The sonic boom was from a Chinese rocket that entered the earth’s atmosphere and crashed near the island.

“We heard the bang around 5.30am,” David Warner said. “Experts say the noise we heard is the crack in the atmosphere, which sets off a wave of sound not the actual impact of the rocket.”

Videos claimed to show a comet-like object trailing across the sky and into the ocean near the archipelago.

The Maldives capital, Male, was shaken by a terrorist blast on Thursday evening, which critically injured parliamentary speaker and former president Mohamed Nasheed.

The players are attempting to lie low after a public backlash over perceptions they are receiving favourable treatment when at least 8000 Australian citizens have been unable to get out of India.

The stranded citizens had struggled to pay the steep prices demanded on the occasional flights before a total flight ban — with threats of jail terms — was introduced.

Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley said last week the players were not seeking any exemptions and were given government permission to attend the IPL and return.

The Australians at the IPL had been assigned quarantine places over and above the caps affecting the return of other citizens.

The Australian revealed on Friday that Hussey had tested negative a few days after the original diagnosis. The player they called Mr Cricket had been isolated in his hotel room suffering mild symptoms, which included fever, but was flown to Chennai at the end of the week where his franchise had arranged care.

Hussey needs two negative tests before he can leave India and return home like the 38 other Australians involved in the IPL.

He is in the same facility as New Zealand player Tim Seifert, who was diagnosed with COVID just hours before he was due to join a flight out of India.

Seifert tested positive the same time as Indian Kolkata Knight Riders player Prasidh Krishna. The pair joined KKR’s Varun Chakaravarthy and Sandeep Warrier, who had been announced positive earlier last week.

Six players, two coaches and two peripheral staff members have fallen ill with the virus.

BCCI president Sourav Ganguly indicated over the weekend that the postponed event would not recommence in India.

“India is supposed to go to Sri Lanka for three ODIs and five T20Is. There are lots of organisational hazards like 14-day quarantine. It can’t happen in India. This quarantine is tough to handle. Too early to say how we can find a slot to complete the IPL,” he said.

“You can say that now in hindsight that the IPL should have been called off earlier. Mumbai and Chennai (bio bubbles) did not have cases. Only when the IPL reached Delhi and Ahmedabad did the cases rise. People will say a lot of things in any case. The English Premier League had so many people affected. But they could reschedule the matches. But you can’t do that with IPL. You stop it for seven days and it is done. Players go back home and then the process of quarantine starts from scratch.”

A proposal to play the IPL in the UAE was originally rejected but that now seems likely to happen.

India is supposed to host the T20 World Cup later in the year.