India boycott press match after media battles

Aggrieved at their treatment in Australia over the past few days, sections of India’s backroom team and travelling media have boycotted a prearranged press match against local counterparts that was meant to be played on Sunday afternoon.

The game, scheduled to be played as a Twenty20 at Junction Oval in Melbourne, had been organised by Cricket Australia as a gesture of goodwill to both media packs amid a hectic summer.

An empty Junction Oval where the media game was due to be played.

But the game was cancelled on Sunday after the Indian team’s media manager chose not to take part, according to three sources with knowledge of the events, who would not be named in order to speak freely.

That led to numerous members of the travelling media contingent also pulling out, making it impossible to play a formal match. The BCCI was contacted for comment.

Earlier in the day, captain Rohit Sharma was hit on the knee by a throwdown at the MCG nets. After trying to bat on, he left his session and sought treatment from the team physio, in obvious pain.

India’s Test squad has had a few run-ins with media and public on this tour, starting with stringent restrictions placed on spectators watching the team train in Perth ahead of the series. The restrictions extended to an email requesting that workers on the adjoining WACA Ground construction site refrain from taking photos or footage of training.

Rohit Sharma after seeking treatment for a knee knock.Credit: Wayne Taylor

A public training session was called in Adelaide, but that led to a ban on further such sessions in Brisbane and Sydney after as many as 5000 fans turned up to watch. This was considered an unwanted distraction by the Indian team, causing subsequent sessions to be much lower in profile.

“The net sessions are very private,” Rohit explained in Adelaide. “This was the first time ever that I saw so many people at the nets. When you’re training and practicing, there are a lot of conversations and those conversations are very private.

“We don’t want anybody to hear those conversations, it’s as simple as that. There’s five days of Test cricket, they can come and watch us there.”

Relations between the Indian team and local media took a downturn when the squad began to arrive in Melbourne on Thursday. Virat Kohli objected to a Nine News crew filming his family on their arrival, and complained vocally to the female reporter at the time.

This incident was followed on Saturday by a press conference involving Ravindra Jadeja where the spinner answered questions only in Hindi.

The media call was cut short before any English questions could be asked because it had started behind schedule and the team bus was due to depart from the ground, according to India’s media manager.

On Sunday, the young fast bowler Akash Deep spoke to media after Indian team training but answered questions in Hindi only. India’s one remaining training session before the Boxing Day Test will be on Tuesday, Christmas Eve.

There is sympathy in the Australian camp for the Indian tourists in the sense that the likes of Kohli and others enjoy their relative anonymity on Australian tours, as distinct from the wall-to-wall fan adoration they experience in India. The sheer size of the team’s following means that most training takes place behind closed doors, and during series, most players spend little time outside of a rigorous pattern of airports, hotels and cricket grounds.

Australia has been different for the Indian players, but there is a trend towards greater hubbub as the south Asian population grows here. At the same time, CA has gone to every length to sell this series to Indian fans based in Australia and also those travelling from overseas, adding to the sense of greater scrutiny for the tourists.

Press matches are a tradition largely from a bygone era, when cricket media travelled overseas in far larger numbers than the present day and commonly played games.

There have been occasional revivals of the tradition in recent seasons: an Australian media XI played against a New Zealand side in Christchurch earlier this year.

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