Zimbabwe batsman Brendan Taylor rued the impact of Covid-19 on what was to be a rare busy season for his team on the field.

Though faced with a scarcity of cricket on most years, Zimbabwe had a packed calendar in 2020, beginning the year with a Test series against Sri Lanka at home, followed by a full tour of Bangladesh. They also had fixtures lined up against Afghanistan, Australia, India and Netherlands, before the novel coronavirus shut down all activity across the world.

“Personally, this break is not doing us any favours,” Taylor told The Standard. “I feel we are a team that needs to be playing more often, we’ve always been starved of cricket. This year, we had a full schedule of international cricket, but that’s now been jeopardised by this pandemic. So it’s extremely frustrating and hurtful times. But there are people out there losing their lives and their loved ones to this terrible virus, so at the end of the day, cricket is not so important anymore, is it?

“We’d have obviously wanted to be playing, I’m sure everyone would have wanted that, because in the past we gained momentum when we were playing regularly, and unfortunately, we’ve always been hampered by the fact that we play a series and then we don’t play for three or four months.[But] there’s a bigger picture here and cricket will come back eventually and when that time comes everyone will be chomping [sic] at the bit to get going.”

Taylor also said that this is the time for players to look at how they can contribute to society and help make lives easier as the world grapples with a pandemic.

“I think it’s a time where as players we can be a little more proactive, setting up GoFundMe pages trying to help the old, the homeless, and that’s a big issue in our country,” Taylor said. “When this virus comes to an end it will be nice to support local business, restaurants and other areas that are in desperate need and that’s where as players we are very lucky to be in a position to give back.”