Indian captain Virat Kohli and his team arrived in New Zealand within a week of playing on home soil against Australia. India played last ODI against Australia on 19th January and they were New Zealand bound on the very next day which makes the things more hectic.
Not pleased with the scheduling, he said on Thursday that the cricketers are now approaching the situation when they will have to start playing directly on the stadium itself. India will play New Zealand in the first match of the five-match T20 series on Friday.
“It’s getting closer and closer to landing at the stadium straight. That’s how compressed the gap has become. This kind of travelling to a place that is seven and a half hours ahead of IST is difficult to adjust immediately. Hopefully, this will be taken into consideration in the future,.
“But this is the year of the World Cup and every T20 is important. So, we can’t lose our focus,” Virat Kohli said on the eve of 1st T20.
The Indian captain may have taken a dig at BCCI but it has not gone well with the governing body. A BCCI official slammed him by saying that the Indian captain should have talked to the board before giving any statements in public.
“He has every right to raise a point, but to be fair, all travel plans are made keeping in mind the interest of the players. If you see, we tried to space it out as much as we could post the World Cup when we played at home and the boys were also given a break during Diwali.
“It honestly made more sense to be flying to Auckland from Bengaluru than the team regrouping after a break,” BCCI functionary said as quoted by an agency report in India.com
