Australia have suffered a setback ahead of their tour of their tour of Sri Lanka this month.
Australia coach Andrew McDonald will miss the start of his side’s tour of Sri Lanka after he picked up Covid-19 on Tuesday.
McDonald tested positive to the virus on Tuesday afternoon and will not be able to fly to Sri Lanka with the remainder of the team this week as he remains in isolation in Melbourne for a seven-day period.
It means 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.
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Australia have 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.
