BCCI made sweeping changes to Indian cricket team's player regulations earlier this year.
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri has shared his two cents on the BCCI’s decision to restrict players’ families from joining them in overseas tours.
Earlier this year, the BCCI made sweeping changes to Indian cricket team's player regulations in the wake of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024/25 debacle Down Under and 3-0 humiliation at the hands of New Zealand in a home Test series.
Cracking the whip against the players, the Indian board implemented a stringent 10-point guidelines, including making participation in domestic tournaments mandatory and limiting travel of wives and girlfriends on overseas tours.
Speaking on the Grade Cricketer podcast, Shastri said that when there are too many individuals around, players tend to get distracted and it might be that current head coach Gautam Gambhir saw the situation getting out of hand and decided to limit family travel.
“When there are too many people around, you tend to get distracted. He (Gambhir) must have seen it is getting out of hand. So he just put a limit on what can be done and what cannot be done," Shastri remarked.
According to Shastri, maintaining such an environment in the dressing room requires a specific kind of leadership -- a calm, composed captain who can think on their feet under pressure. He backed India’s current Test and ODI skipper Shubman Gill to embody that vision.
“The good thing for him is that he has got a captain now who is stable, composed and calm. Gill is the man for the next decade for India," Shastri said.
While Gill made his Test captaincy debut on the tour of England earlier this year, his first assignment as the ODI captain is the three-match series against Australia, slated to start on Sunday (October 19) in Perth.