Australia cricketers to be fully vaccinated by end of November: Nick Hockley

Australia players, both international and domestic, are expected to be fully vaccinated by the end of this month. The country will become the first major cricketing nation with every professional player fully vaccinated. The cricketers who are on national contracts were given both doses of vaccine by September while 97% of the domestic cricketers have received their second dose as well.

This comes as a great development for Cricket Australia especially ahead of Men’s Ashes as traveling might become easy for them during the series. CA Chief Executive Nick Hockley praised the players in the country for understanding their responsibility despite a few anti-vaccine rallies running in Australia over the last few months.

“Everyone is showing great leadership. We are 100% fully vaccinated for both male and female international players. And then we are at 100% the first dose for our domestic playing group. There has been a big education program, our medical advisors have run workshop sessions for staff and players. It’s symptomatic of the whole last 18 months,” he said according to cricket.com.au.

No need to mandate vaccines, says Hockley

Cricket Australia made it mandatory for the whole staff to get fully vaccinated. However, Nick Hockley stated that no such mandate is needed for the players as they will be 100% vaccinated soon. He also credited the cricketers, both men and women, for understanding their roles in helping the nation and the world recover from the pandemic.

“People have been asking me are we going to mandate vaccines, do we need to mandate vaccines? It’s almost irrelevant because we are fully-vaccinated. It’s a credit to the whole playing group for the leadership they have shown,” Hockley further said.

Australian Cricketers Association CEO Todd Greenberg was also happy and proud that they didn’t need to mandate vaccines with players willingly coming forward. “Much of the credit here should go to the chief medical officers of the state associations and CA, as well as others, whose work on this has been very intensive. All of our players were provided with information sessions and access to all the information they needed on vaccinations. That cricket has been able to achieve this, without having to mandate it, speaks very highly to everyone involved. But I am also proud of our players who have clearly understood their responsibility to their families, their friends, their teammates, and ultimately the game they love,” Todd said.