Indian cricket officials have come down hard on the team in the wake of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy surrender with wives and girlfriends in the firing line amid a range of bizarre recommendations.
The BCCI has proposed a series of new rules for life on tour after the 3-1 series hammering in Australia which cost them any chance of making the World Test Championship final.
According to the review’s recommendations, wives cannot stay with players for the entire tour in future and for any tournament 45 days or longer, families will only be allowed to stay with players for two weeks.
And if the tour is shorter, that could be cut to just seven days.
In a sign that the squad was fractured on the tour Down Under, the BCCI has stated that “all players will have to travel on the team bus”.
Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah reportedly travelled with their young families during the tour rather than the rest of the team and there have even been reports that the squad did not even celebrate their first Test win in Perth together.
Head coach Gautum Gambhir has also been given a dressing down with his personal manager no longer allowed “to sit in the VIP box or travel on the team bus”. He will also have to stay in a different hotel to the team.
Even though the BCCI is raking in mega millions, the head honchos are penny pinching by also telling players that if their luggage exceeds 150kg, the extra charges will be passed onto them.
Gambhir and captain Rohit Sharma, who stood himself down for the final Test at the SCG due to his woeful form, have fronted the BCCI as part of the review into what went wrong in their first series loss to the Aussies in a decade.
In a further sign of divisions in the Indian camp, Gambhir reportedly had a run-in with bowling coach Morne Morkel after the former South African seamer turned up late to a training session due to a personal meeting.
Jasprit Bumrah and Gautam Gambhir (Photo by Ayush Kumar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Former Indian batter Aakash Chopra supported the BCCI’s decision to bring in restrictions on families on tour on his YouTube channel.
“Internet is going crazy as to why families and partners are not being allowed to travel as it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault. Teams never lose because of them. In fact, players are happier when they go and meet their family. However, there are two aspects to it,” he said.
“If it’s a tour of more than 45 days, at the start you get the team together, and the families can come for two weeks in the middle when you feel homesick, and then you get back to business.
“It’s not that bad. There was a reason why it used to happen like that earlier. It’s not that people weren’t married earlier.”