Is this the End of the Indian Galactico?

13 January 2025

There’s turmoil in the Indian cricket camp and, in a wide-ranging interview with Natalie Sawyer, broadcaster and former cricketer Suhail Chandhok offered us a comprehensive analysis of the state of the game in India, which you can hear on Episode 8 of This Sporting Planet. The biggest current story must be the Board of Control of Cricket in India’s new guidelines for players.

“India was the unbeatable force over the last few years in every format…The team seemed to just be coming together so well under Rohit Sharma, who is such a loved character, I think, in amongst the players as well,” Suhail explained, setting the scene. Then, there was “the complete U-turn, over the course of just one series in Australia” where India lost 3-1 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In response to this defeat, the BCCI published ten guidelines for international cricketers. And that has not been greeted with universal acclaim, to say the least.

“[I]t's now become about how much excess baggage you can carry; the duration that wives and girlfriends can stay; who's going to be traveling by one airline and, you know, whether everyone's going to stay and training together… domestic cricket versus non domestic cricket and a whole lot more,” Suhail told Natalie.

The ten points are:

1. Participation in domestic matches is mandatory if players are to remain eligible for selection in the national team.
2. All players are expected to travel with the team to and from matches and practise sessions.
3. Players are required to adhere to the specified baggage limits shared with the team.
4. Personal staff are to be restricted on tours or series unless explicitly approved by the BCCI.
5. Players must coordinate with team management regarding equipment and personal items being sent to the Centre of Excellence.
6. All players are required to stay for the entire duration of scheduled practise sessions and travel together to and from the venue.
7. Players are not permitted to engage in personal shoots or endorsements during an ongoing series or tour.
8. Family travel policy (which restricts the duration of visits by partners and children).
9. Players are required to be available for BCCI's official shoots, promotional activities, and functions.
10. Players are required to stay with the team until the scheduled end of the match series or tour, regardless of whether matches conclude earlier than planned.

Suhail explained that much of this may come as a surprise to other international cricketers. “I think the cohesiveness in terms of turning up the training at the same time, leaving at the same time, I mean, for most teams, these are pretty much a given,” he explained. “Most teams will look at this and say, hang on, why was it not there in the first place?”

These guidelines suggest that there has been an interestingly divergent atmosphere within Indian cricket. Bringing that to light, however, may, he suggested, be counter-productive.

“I think it's now got a lot of stuff under the scanner that should just remain within the team unit. You know what it's like when a paper has been leaked or, you know, a team meeting has been leaked… It causes a bit of a rift within the team. And I think this is just a bit of poor timing in terms of all of it coming together, because it also makes it seem like more of a knee jerk reaction, even though I think a lot of these processes are for the right reason.”

Once the information is out there, though, it is certainly interesting. For example, whereas international teams tend to have a chef travelling with them, it turns out that various Indian players had their own personal chefs on tour. It’s part of a superstar culture that has long been integral to the national side, and, indeed, Suhail told us, to the national culture.

“India longs for heroes, long for icons. And I keep saying we've got a long way to go before we become a true sporting nation, because quite often we don't go to watch sport. We go to watch the sporting icons. And therefore there is this hero culture that we're chasing.”

These guidelines aim to bring everyone to the same level, to ensure “that a guy who's playing his first ODI or T20 feels, at least in the dressing room, like he's the same as the guy who's played, you know, two World Cups or four World Cups.”

While Suhail supports many of the guidelines, which he feels may well increase parity and cohesiveness – or support domestic cricket in India, he has some concerns about the restrictions to family travel. On a 45-day tour, families can only stay for 14 days.

“Let's say you go out and you fail the first test and a half or two tests, you want your support system around you, and what if the two-week curfew at that point is done right?” Suhail said. “If that's when you want your wife or your girlfriend around you the most, you feel kind of hard done by. If you know there's a hard and fast rule saying, you know what, 14 days done. Sorry.”

Natalie and Suhail didn’t just consider the guidelines: there’s far more to fascinate cricket fans. The form of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli; the importance of Jasprit Bumrah; the management style of Gautam Gambhir; the possible repercussions of insisting on players competing in domestic cricket rather than the IPL; the young Indian cricketers who look likely to make an impact and the upcoming tour to England.

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