After a string of disappointing performances against New Zealand and the Border Gavaskar Trophy, all the national team stars made a comeback to domestic cricket. The BCCI issued a mandate that playing domestic cricket is necessary. As a result, Virat Kohli & Rohit Sharma made a return to the Ranji Trophy after 12 & 9 years respectively. But this didn’t go down well with Kapil Dev as he blasted both the star batters.
Rohit Sharma played against Jammu and Kashmir while Kohli played against Railways. Unfortunately, both the star batters had poor outings on their domestic cricket return. Former India Cricket Team captain, Kapil Dev was not at all happy with this. He wants a much more strict system by the BCCI so that it becomes mandatory for Indian stars to play red-ball domestic cricket every year.
Kapil Dev wants strong BCCI system for domestic cricket?
“If you are talking about Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, playing Ranji Trophy after 12 years…how is that right? It does not look good at all. It’s not because they did not perform. Whether they score runs or not, you have to score runs in domestic cricket. So yes, certain strong measures have to be taken. But my point is, had we won or had Rohit or Kohli scored runs, would they have played Ranji Trophy? Don’t look at the performances, make the system strong. Whether you score zero or lakhs of runs, play cricket by staying within the system,” Kapil Dev said at Cricket Adda.
The former India captain also raised a good point. He questioned whether both Rohit and Virat Kohli have played Ranji Trophy if they had scored runs in Australia. Kohli scored 191 runs from 11 innings including an unbeaten century at Perth. Rohit however managed just 31 runs from 5 innings at Down Under.
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The other mandate that came from the BCCI was regarding the stay of family and wives. The duration of stay of family on overseas tours has been cut short.
“Taking your wives on tours is not wrong, but I feel that if the tour is one month, they should not be allowed for the first 20 days so that the players can play together as a team. Similarly, for a three-month campaign, at least for a month players should be left alone with the team. Also team should travel together, this is not an individual sport,” Kapil Dev concluded.
