A BCCI directive, which was issued after India’s 1-3 Test series defeat against Australia, had curtailed the family time of players for no longer than 14 days on tours exceeding 45 days. The wife, children or girlfriends of players could be with them for a maximum of one week on shorter tours.
Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Shami had their families in Dubai during the recently-concluded Champions Trophy but they did not stay at the team hotel. The expense of the families’ stay was borne by the players and not the BCCI.
“The role of family is 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. I don’t think people have an understanding of what value it brings,” said Kohli.
Kohli said having the family around would help a player to recover from on-field disappointments that much quicker.
“I feel quite disappointed about that because it’s like people who have no control over what’s going on are brought into conversations and put out at the forefront of that — ‘oh, maybe they need to be kept away’. And if you ask any player, do you want your family to be around you all the time? You’ll be like, yes,” he said.
