India head coach Gautam Gambhir backed the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) revised travel policies, introduced after the 1-3 Border-Gavaskar Trophy 24-25 defeat in Australia, to limit the presence of cricketers’ families during long overseas tours.
While tournaments spanning 45 days or more allow families to accompany players for two weeks, shorter tours restrict family stays to a maximum of seven days, as per the revised rules by the BCCI in January.
Senior India batter Virat Kohli had opened up about his reaction to BCCI’s restrictions ahead of the IPL 2025 season.
“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,” Kohli said at the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit.
“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’,” Kohli said.
“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,” Kohli added.
‘Not a holiday’
Speaking ahead of the Lord’s Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy against England in an interaction with Cheteshwar Pujara, Gambhir backed the BCCI’s decision to limit the players’ families on tour.
Story continues below this ad
“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.
When asked by Pujara on how he unwinds between games, Gambhir said: “That’s a tough question. I still haven’t understood how do I switch off because I never switch off and sometimes it’s very funny and it’s very weird. Honestly, when we won the last test match, the moment we won the last test match, the first thing that came in my mind was that what is going to be the combination for the next Test?”
“And when I went back in my room, I was thinking, how does that work? We’ve just won a test match. The guys have worked hard to make a comeback after the first one, I already started thinking about what’s going to be the combination, how can we win the next one? but I still haven’t figured out honestly to switch off,” said Gambhir.
