India’s disastrous results in the last two Test series, which cost them a place in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, are set to have repercussions closer to home. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has taken a dim view of the back-to-back series defeats to New Zealand (0-3) and Australia (1-3) and are set to clamp down on players’ families accompanying them for the entire duration of overseas tours.
The rules regarding spouses and children were relaxed after the Covid-19 pandemic, but Indian cricket is now set to return to the old ways. For overseas tours longer than 45 days, players’ families will only be allowed to stay with them for 14 days. On shorter tours, the longest they can be in the team hotel is a week. In Australia, several players’ families were around for the entire duration.
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The BCCI has also cracked the whip on players travelling separately. In recent times, it had become common for star players to journey from venue to venue, or even from team hotel to stadium, privately, and not on the team bus. From here on, no exceptions will be made, with every squad member expected to be on the team bus.
Eyebrows were also raised by the presence of Gautam Gambhir’s personal manager for the duration of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. He will now be asked to stay away, and not be allowed to stay with the team or use the transport assigned to them. The BCCI has also gotten stricter with players’ baggage allowances on flights.
When India went to Australia, they did so in batches, and not as a group. It was also reported that players seldom had meals together and pretty much did their own thing outside the stadiums. The BCCI officials, who met with Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, the captain, and Ajit Agarkar, chief selector, felt that the team’s performances were affected by such a big group following them around throughout the Australia tour.
In lean times, players’ partners have often been an easy target for official and fan ire. Yuvraj Singh’s failures on the tour of Australia in 2007-08 were attributed to the presence of a Bollywood actress he was dating at the time. In England in 2014, Sunil Dev, the tour manager, made disparaging remarks about Anushka Sharma’s presence at the first two Tests of a series in which Virat Kohli tallied just 134 runs in 10 innings. Quite how she was responsible for Kohli edging Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad behind the stumps was left to the imagination.
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