SA vs AUS | Will try our best to allow crowd for series against Australia, reveals Graeme Smith

One of the riveting rivalries in the world of cricket, Australia and South Africa have been home to many classic encounters across the cricketing formats. Before COVID-19 brought cricket to a screeching halt, Australia played a full-fledged limited-overs series against South Africa away from home in a bid to play a Test series later in the future. 

With COVID-19 putting an abrupt end to world cricket, South Africa has been one of the hotspots of the virus, with 765,000 infected and 21,000 dead. However, with world cricket returning to full flow, South Africa’s Director of Cricket Graeme Smith has confirmed that they will try their level best to allow crowd for the Test series against Australia. 

“We’re kind of looking at the Australian series, hopefully if all goes well with COVID, to have some crowds back in the stadiums. There’ll be way more excitement around that than anything else,” the former skipper told Sydney Morning Herald.

Despite the tour not being finalised yet, Smith revealed that Newlands, where the infamous Sandpaper gate happened would host a Test match against Australia. However, Smith admitted that rivalry, fans chirping is all part of playing the sport and they would try to marshall it the best possible. 

“You can control it to the best of your ability. There’s not a place in the world where there hasn’t been a fan chirping or having a crack. That’s part of playing sport at the highest level in opposition countries. We’ll try our best to marshall it. I think South African fans will be grateful to have a quality team like Australia playing,” he added. 

“It’s been one of those crazy periods where things we’ve gotten used to have been taken away from us.”

These two sides met earlier in 2020, where Australia snatched the T20I series 2-1 before collapsing to a 3-0 loss in the succeeding ODI series, where they looked clueless against the hosts South Africa.