CHRISTCHURCH – Tests on a group of 10 West In­dies play­ers and sup­port staff – in­clud­ing Test cap­tain Ja­son Hold­er and Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al cap­tain Kieron Pol­lard – cur­rent­ly en­dur­ing man­aged iso­la­tion for the COVID-19 virus on the Tour of New Zealand have all been re­turned as neg­a­tive.

New Zealand Crick­et, the gov­ern­ing body for the sport in the coun­try, made the an­nounce­ment in a me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day that the sec­ond of three tests, which the group must un­der­go be­fore be­ing re­leased from quar­an­tine, showed no ad­verse find­ings.

The groups, which al­so in­cludes play­ers such as T20I vice-cap­tain Nicholas Pooran, fel­low left-hand­ed bats­man Shim­ron Het­my­er and all-rounder Keemo Paul, will have their fi­nal tests on Day 12 of their stay in the quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.

Re­sults per­mit­ting, the group will leave man­aged iso­la­tion next Thurs­day (No­vem­ber 26), one day be­fore the Windies face the Black­caps in the first Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­al at Eden Park in Auck­land.

The play­ers and sup­port staff in iso­la­tion and the out­come of the tests have come in­to sharp fo­cus again, af­ter New Zealand health of­fi­cials pre­vent­ed an ad­vance group of the Windies from train­ing last week be­cause mem­bers of the squad had flout­ed strict pro­to­cols in place at the man­aged iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty.

There was no in­di­ca­tion that any of the mem­bers of the ad­vanced group of the Windies squad left or had con­tact with any­one out­side of the man­aged iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty in which they had been con­fined af­ter they ar­rived in the coun­try al­most three weeks ago.

Play­ers in the ad­vance group were re­port­ed­ly caught on cam­era shar­ing food and so­cial­is­ing in the fa­cil­i­ty, which was against the strict rules of man­aged iso­la­tion in place in the coun­try.

The news of the sec­ond neg­a­tive test will come as a great re­lief to the cur­rent group play­ers and sup­port staff in quar­an­tine be­cause they can be­gin to count down the days un­til they can leave the fa­cil­i­ty to join the rest of the Windies squad.

This will al­low them greater free­dom of move­ment to train and pre­pare for their se­ries of three T20Is and two Tests against the Black­caps, and the abil­i­ty to freely mix with the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try.

The ad­vanced group of the Windies squad trav­elled last Fri­day to the south­ern is­land city of Queen­stown, where they will be­gin a three-day match against New Zealand “A”, start­ing this Fri­day (6 p.m. on Thurs­day – East Caribbean) at John Davies Oval.

CMC