Indian cricket team head coach Gautam Gambhir broke his silence on the BCCI’s diktat that set new rules on families accompanying the cricketers during overseas tours. Following India’s Test series loss against Australia, BCCI introduced a new set of guidelines that limited the time spent by families with the players during overseas tours. The rule stated that the families could accompany players for 14 days for competitions lasting 45 days or longer. The diktat was criticised quite vocally by Virat Kohli who made it clear that he was not a fan of the new rule. However, in an interview with Cheteshwar Pujara, Gambhir said that players should know that they are not on a holiday while travelling overseas for a series and admitted that while families can be around, the main focus of every player should be on cricket.
“Families are important, but you’ve got to understand one thing. You are here for a purpose. It’s not a holiday. You’re here for a huge purpose. You’ve got very few people in that dressing room or in this tour that gets this opportunity to make the country proud. So yes, I’m not against not having families with us.”
“It is important to have families, but if your focus is towards making our country proud and you have a much bigger role than any other thing, and you’re committed to that goal, you’re committed to that cause, I think everything else is fine. But for me, I think that cause and that goal is more important than any other thing,” said Gambhir.
Earlier, Virat opened up about his feelings regarding the new BCCI diktat.
“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. 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’,” said ” Kohli said at the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit.