The BCCI announced a set of guidelines for the Indian team following their disastrous tour of Australia, among which was a rule restricting the amount of time family members could spent with a player during overseas tours. The board, however, is reconsidering the rule after Virat Kohli publicly slammed it at a recent event.
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A little over two months after cracking the whip on the Indian team with a series of guidelines, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is likely to relax its
restrictions on family members accompanying players on overseas tours. This development comes on the heels of star batter Virat Kohli’s criticism of the rule.
News agency ANI quoted a BCCI source as saying that players could get their partners and children on foreign tours for more than two weeks so long as they applied for permission with the BCCI. The source added that the “board will do their best”.
Following India’s disastrous tour of Australia, in which the Rohit Sharma-led side surrendered the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after eight years
with a 1-3 series defeat, the BCCI had announced a 10-point guideline for the Indian team and support staff.
Among those guidelines was a time limit on family members accompanying a player during an overseas tour, with the
BCCI not allowing more than two weeks for a trip lasting 45 days or longer.
What Kohli had said on BCCI’s family diktat
Speaking at the Royal Challengers Bengaluru Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit ahead of the 18th season of the Indian Premier League, Kohli expressed his “disappointment” over the rule and explained that no player wants to “sit alone and sulk” in their hotel room.
“It’s very difficult to explain to people how grounding it is to just come back to your family every time you have something which is intense, which happens on the outside,” the RCB star said at the event.
“I don’t think people have an understanding of what value it brings to a large extent. And I feel quite disappointed about that because it’s like people who have no control over what’s going on are kind of brought into conversations and put out at the forefront that, ‘oh, maybe they need to be kept away’.
“If you ask any player, do you want your family to be around you all the time? You’ll be like, yes. I don’t want to go to my room and just sit alone and sulk. I want to be able to be normal. And then you can really treat your game as something that is a responsibility. You finish that responsibility, and you come back to life,” he added.
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The BCCI had recently relaxed their family rule in order to allow family members to attend one match in the recently-concluded Champions Trophy, in which the Rohit Sharma-led Men in Blue triumphed over New Zealand in the final by four wickets to win their second ICC event in as many years.
Kohli’s actor-wife Anushka Sharma was present in the stands during the Champions Trophy final as was skipper Rohit’s better half Ritika Sajdeh.
The BCCI, however, hasn’t announced any relaxations for the other rules, including one which cuts down on private travel and requires the entire team to travel together.