India tour of Australia 2020-21

Australia batting star Steve Smith acknowledged that the hosts would love to play the fourth and final Test against India in Brisbane despite Queensland entering into a three-day coronavirus-forced lockdown

Brisbane went into three days of strict lockdown later on Friday as the government tries to contain a more contagious variant of Covid-19, raising more doubts about the Gabba hosting next week's fourth Test between Australia and India.

"To my knowledge, not anything is changed from our point of view, we will wait and see and that is not our decision to make, we are the players and we go where we are told and do what we need to do, but we would like to play at the Gabba for sure," Steve Smith said in a virtual press conference after the end of the second day's action at the SCG.

Meanwhile, three Big Bash League (BBL) matches originally scheduled to be played in Sydney have been moved to Canberra due to state border closures after an outbreak of COVID-19 in Australia's biggest city.

Hotel staff in a quarantined hotel in Brisbane has tested positive for the new highly contagious UK variant of the coronavirus.

"We are going to go hard and we are going to go early to do everything we can to stop the spread," Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said, as quoted by AP.

"This is incredibly serious. We are declaring that Greater Brisbane area a hotspot and I'm also asking my colleagues from other jurisdictions to also declare Greater Brisbane a hotspot until we get through this together," Palaszczuk said.