India ban open net sessions after carnival crowd distracts players

India have banned open training sessions for the rest of their Australian tour after up to 5000 spectators descended on Adelaide Oval for their run under lights on Tuesday night.

Plans for similar open sessions in Brisbane and Sydney – to be promoted on social media by Cricket Australia – will now not go ahead after India’s players felt uncomfortable preparing amid a carnival atmosphere at the ground. Australia’s training sessions will remain open to fans.

Indian fans at the training session.Credit: Getty Images

Training at the MCG is always open because the outdoor nets are located in public space outside the ground in Yarra Park.

Estimates for the attendance at training in Adelaide varied between 3000 and 5000 fans, who cheered loudly for their favourite stars, such as Virat Kohli, around the nets and fielding sessions on the oval.

The players were greeted like rock stars on a scale far larger than the smaller group of fans who attended Australia’s session earlier in the day. However, a source close to the Board of Control for Cricket in India indicated that players were also subjected to requests for selfies while they were batting, constant commentary of their actions in close proximity and some were mocked or laughed at after missing the ball or getting out.

It is a tradition at most Australian venues for fans to be allowed to watch training ahead of a Test match, and Cricket Australia held lengthy negotiations with the BCCI before the tourists agreed to the open session in Adelaide.

“India have expressed a preference for their remaining training sessions not to be open to the public to minimise potential noise or distractions,” a CA spokesperson told this masthead.

The sessions will remain open to media.

Rohit Sharma’s team had prepared behind a cloak of seclusion in Perth ahead of the series, with security tightly guarding the team’s space. India’s players are used to open training sessions for white-ball games and the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition, but Test match preparation tends to be a more private affair for most international teams.

“Very different. Not used to it,” KL Rahul told reporters on Wednesday. “We have practice with crowds but it’s mostly T20 and ODIs back home, we’ve had crowds come in and watch our practice sessions.

Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli walk out to training in Adelaide on Thursday night.Credit: Getty Images

“So it felt a little different but also it adds to your preparation for the Test match and gives us a bit of what we can expect on day one or all the days here in Adelaide, so it was good.”

There is a paradox to the experience of Indian cricketers in Australia. The touring side loves the relative anonymity they are afforded here, and players explore their surroundings much more freely than at home, where they tend to be confined to cricket grounds and hotels.

But that experience is slowly changing as Australian cricket pushes to engage greater numbers of the south Asian immigrant population that has brought a love of cricket to this country.

Adelaide Oval has witnessed some extraordinary sights around open training in the past. In 1998, a club cricketer called Ian O’Rourke heckled the touring South African team so consistently that an irritated captain, the late Hansie Cronje, invited him into the nets to have a hit with the words, “see if it’s so easy from this side”.

Cronje, Lance Klusener, Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock then proceeded to send down a succession of bouncers at O’Rourke, whose struggles to lay bat on ball led Pat Symcox to remark “would you like me to put a bell in it?”

India’s training session on Wednesday was a much quieter affair, with a gaggle of spectators allowed no further than the locked southern gates, from which they could get a fleeting glimpse of the nets more than 100 metres away.

Rahul, who played the ideal foil for young batting sensation Yashasvi Jaiswal in Perth, is expected to drop down to No.3 to make way for Rohit’s return to the team.

“We were really happy with the way we played and it does give you confidence when you travel to Australia and win the first game and win it in the way we did, especially in Perth,” Rahul said. “So much has been spoken about Perth being the fastest wicket in Australia and teams that travel here really struggle there, so we have taken a lot of confidence from that, but we try and move on.

“Pink ball is going to be different, so take the confidence from that game and really use that in this game. One thing that’s been spoken a lot in the dressing room is winning sessions and not really worrying about winning the whole game or talking about day four or day five, just winning each session. We’ll be trying to do that again.”

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