Can a BCCI cap on family time be the recipe for Indian superstar’s success?

Will there be actually a cap on family visits the next time Indian cricket team go on an extended overseas tour, with the England tour coming up in June–July?

The buzz about the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) mulling such a plan has gained momentum since Tuesday, 14 January, polarising opinions.

According to people in the know, a suggestion to go back to the pre-Covid days — when visits from the wives and girlfriends (WAGs) were allowed for a limited time span only — has been mooted along with a series of other disciplinary measures... including a curb on the movements of the personal manager of head coach Gautam Gambhir!

However, the BCCI wants to tread carefully as well, to ensure a buy-in from the senior players while also sending out a message that discipline needs tightening up after that disastrous tour of Australia.

The guidelines currently on the anvil say that the WAGs will be permitted to travel with the players for no more than 2 weeks on tours lasting more than 6 weeks; for shorter tours, they may come along for no more than 7 days.

No VIP treatment

In another move which almost smacks of high-school discipline, all players will be required to travel by the team bus rather than take individual cars to practice sessions or games. (No prizes for guessing that move is aimed at the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah.)

There is also talk of the BCCI top brass being upset with the VIP treatment accorded to Gambhir’s manager, who was on the tour Down Under with him. Henceforth, he is to stay in a separate hotel and will not be allowed to travel on the team bus.

Incidentally, the chief coach — whose man management is under scrutiny — had enjoyed carte blanche from the board until now, from choosing his own support team to playing the expert for a private YouTube channel of a website in the middle of the series.

The idea of employing such embargoes has, over the years and across sports, polarised opinions as to whether they can produce the desired results.

In Indian cricket, the Virat Kohli–Ravi Shastri regime is credited with liberalising the policy os that WAGs could accompany players for longer stretches:, from South Africa to England, and even during the 2019 World Cup.

However, after India’s shock semi-final loss to New Zealand, whispers began of the presence of wives leading to fissures between the team’s superstars!

With the pandemic setting in next year, of course, the practice of players retaining access to their families via bio bubbles became routine — providing emotional stability during difficult times. Post-Covid, then, it became a regular feature for the families to stay together on tours and nobody batted an eyelid about it... until the Australia tour sparked a need to crack the whip again, apparently.

There is a strong perception that the BCCI, having soft-pedalled around their highly paid stars for far too long, is now ready to adopt a now-or-never attitude: from imposing a curb on family time to insisting on domestic matches.

While such a move points a finger at the wives and children as ‘distractions’, a rather misogynistic stance many would underline — and something the senior players will not take too kindly — the feedback from Australia that each of them acted like an island unto themselves has not gone down well with the board either.

History suggests such clampdowns produce mixed results, though.

In 2019, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) implemented a no-WAGs policy during the ICC World Cup after they suffered a 4-0 ODI series loss to England. Pakistan staged an impressive comeback mid-tournament, beating eventual champions England — but their inconsistent performances meant they failed to make the semi-finals. Critics later questioned whether the players’ enforced isolation played a part in the team’s inability to sustain its momentum.

Looking beyond cricket, few episodes were as infamous as England’s 2006 World Cup campaign. High-profile WAGs including Victoria Beckham and Coleen Rooney descended on Germany in high fashion, turning the small town of Baden-Baden into a paparazzi circus. Tabloids lapped up their extravagant shopping trips and nights out while the players underperformed on the pitch.

The Three Lions of 2006, including the likes of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, was one of the finest teams on paper — but fell to the curse of the shootouts to Portugal in the quarter final. The fallout led to a major shift in the English FA’s approach in the next edition in 2010, where the WAGs were kept away, but it failed to bring about a change of luck as they were walloped by Germany in the second round.

The bottomline is: keeping the WAGs away is no guarantee of cutting down on distractions or good results.