In late-night confirmation, it was revealed that all the eight Indian players who were identified as close contacts of Indian all-rounder Krunal Pandya, who had tested positive during the day on Tuesday, July 27, have all returned negative results in the RT-PCR tests that were conducted during the day.
Since Krunal returned a positive test result even in the RT-PCR, all the nine players including him are forced to isolate. Thus these nine players would not be part of the remaining two matches of the series. The rest of the Indian team members have already been removed from the contact of these nine players. The identity of the eight players was not revealed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India even as it identified Krunal.
It is unclear as to how the 30-year-old senior Panday contracted the virus as Sri Lanka Cricket’s overseer of the io-bubble protocols for international tours, Professor Arjuna de Silva could not identify the reason. According to him, the Indian team has an entire hotel to itself and all the staff in it also form the part of the bubble undergoing stringent checks every day., In fact, the hotel staff was checked even on Tuesday and they all returned negative results.
This news has however confirmed that the series would go as planned and the second and third match would be played on July 28 and 29 respectively.