England Chief 'Very Confident' Ashes Tour Will Go Ahead

England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Tom Harrison said Thursday he was "very confident" this year's Ashes tour of Australia would proceed as planned despite possible coronavirus travel

"It's a conversation that's going to take place over the next few weeks but I am very confident we will get to a place where we can fulfil our obligations to tour."

Calls to postponed the Ashes by a year are likely to fall on deaf ears, given the knock-on effects it would cause both England and Australia with their remaining fixture during the ongoing 2021-23 World Test Championship cycle.

Harrison made it clear the ECB were still operating on the basis the 2021/22 Ashes would go ahead as scheduled.

"The Ashes is so important to global cricket, much like an England-India series," he said. "We never want to compromise the integrity of the series for any reason, Cricket Australia understand this, just as well as we do.

"The issue at the moment is the process that we need to go through to get the assurances that we need to be comfortable, that our players can get on the plane to Australia and feel confident that they can be at their best and they can perform at their best, without having to cope with the mental weight of being massively concerned about the conditions.

"We (the ECB and CA) are doing it together," he added. "This is not an adversarial conversation, it's one which we're doing together."