England’s tour began with over half of the playing squad suffering from a bug at one point or another, leading to the call-ups of Somerset pair Dom Bess and Craig Overton as additional cover.

While the illness did afflict a significant proportion of the squad, Woakes was reluctant to speculate over whether or not the England players actually suffered from coronavirus.

Realistically, it’s extremely unlikely that any of the England players contracted Covid-19. Jofra Archer and Stuart Broad became ill ahead of England’s first warm-up game on December 17th, a full two weeks before China first confirmed the presence of the disease. The first confirmed case of the disease in the UK wasn’t until January 31st, while the disease’s confirmed case in South Africa was on March 5th.