Australia‘s newly appointed head coach Andrew McDonald has tested positive for Covid and will miss the start of his side’s tour of Sri Lanka.
Andrew McDonald had tested positive for the Covid virus on Tuesday afternoon and has not flown to Sri Lanka with the remainder of the team this week, remaining in isolation in Melbourne for a seven-day period.
In his absence assistant coach, Michael Di Venuto will take the reins for the opening T20I of the series on June 7 in Colombo, with McDonald set to join the remainder of the team ahead of the second match of the series at the same venue on June 8.
Australia has already announced a new-look coaching setup for the series, with Kiwi great Daniel Vettori and highly-rated cricketing brain Andre Borovec announced as full-time assistants under McDonald ahead of the Sri Lanka tour.
“I have worked with Daniel previously and could not speak more highly of his approach, work ethic, and rapport he brings,” McDonald said last week.
“His experience and balanced style are well documented. He is a great fit and will bring an enormous amount of knowledge to the team.
“Andre has been fantastic for the group when he has been involved as an extremely skilled and experienced high-performance coach.
“He is a great fit culturally and brings the skills to complement our high-performance specialists
The duo will take up their roles ahead of the Test series that commences on June 29, with Di Venuto to be helped out by former Test seamer Clint McKay and spin coach Sri Sriram for the white-ball portions of the series.
