Former Australian cricketer Michael Clarke disagrees with the latest BCCI guidelines for the Indian team. The Board of Control for Cricket in India recently announced some guidelines for the team where they have decided to limit the presence of family members.
The guidelines came into question following a shock defeat to Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. India lost the Test series 1–3 and also failed to qualify for the World Test Championship final.
Michael Clarke highlights a gray area in BCCI's new guidelines
While speaking on ESPN's Around the Wicket segment, Michael Clarke expressed concern over the BCCI's decision to limit the presence of families during tournaments. He believes that balancing families on tour is difficult because some players have spouses and children.
“I found that difficult because throughout my career, I've gone both ways, players, wives and partners were only allowed sometimes, sometimes not, then all the time,” Clarke said.
“The balance was difficult. You had guys who were older, who were married and had kids, you had guys who were single,” added the former Australia captain.
Michael Clarke further asked if a single player was allowed to bring someone to the hotel bar and have a drink. He argued that there is no balance in this guideline and raised questions about it.
“So from the team's perspective, if partners aren't allowed to come over all the time, is the single man allowed to bring someone back to the hotel bar and have a drink with her? Where's the balance?” he argued.
“I don't know how it's going to work. I just think it's a really delicate one because some people find it harder to be away from home,” Clarke noted.
“The culture of India is very different from that of Australia” – Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke also spoke about BCCI's new guideline where the board has made every player play national cricket whenever available. Clarke was surprised to see this rule as he believes it is a no-brainer in Australian cricket.
“It shows that the culture of India is very different from that of Australia. Because a lot of that stuff in the Aussie team is kind of a no-brainer, it's a given as part of that international set-up,” Clarke observed.
“First-class cricket, for example, for me, I think it's great. Our internal system has been strong and because players generally come back when they can and play Sheffield Shield Cricket, BBL, One-Day, whatever it is,” he noted.
India's star cricketers in the Ranji Trophy
The BCCI has introduced a ten-point guideline for centrally contracted players. One of these guidelines was to make national cricket mandatory for every international player whenever it is available.
Following this guide, a no. of star cricketers like Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ravindra Jadeja and Virat Kohli have confirmed their availability for the second phase of the Ranji Trophy.