Small marriage window for super busy cricketers!

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Nagpur, November 22

The marriage season leaves even the Indian cricket team totally helpless sometimes in Nagpur. Last month, for the ODI against Australia, the team couldn’t get the hotel of its choice because, according to a local cricket association official, ‘shaadiyon ka season’ was on. This had happened in 2015 as well, when the team couldn’t find rooms in its preferred hotel for the Test against South Africa. For the Test against Sri Lanka, India have got their preferred hotel, despite the high occupancy in the hotels due to a medical conference.

The team has still been affected by a marriage season which is on around the team itself. Two players requested permission to withdraw from the team after the first Test. Both had done very well in the match. Opener Shikhar Dhawan opted out because of a marriage in the family. Bhuvneshwar Kumar opted out because of a marriage much closer, right at home — he himself gets married tomorrow.

The two men — who both play all formats of the game for India and thus are super-busy — had some marriage-related banter at the airport as they flew home yesterday. Dhawan joked that even before getting married, Bhuvneshwar had become a ‘joru ka ghulam’, and Bhuvneshwar responded: “It’s perhaps called love.”

No off-season

There was a time when along with love, something called the off-season also existed, time when cricket wasn’t played. That was the time when the players could get married. There used to be fewer Tests played, and very, very few ODIs. For instance, the year Kapil Dev got married in, 1980, India played only three Test matches and five ODIs — that’s potentially a maximum of 20 days of international cricket, excluding the rest days during the Tests. They played lots of domestic cricket, though, but Kapil Dev had enough time in the year to find a suitable day to get married without having to skip an India game. He didn’t have to choose between playing for India or getting married on a certain date.

The modern cricketer needs to fine-comb his Tests/ODIs/T20Is/IPL schedules to find the time to get married; if the agreed date falls on a day the team is playing a Test or an ODI, the player must opt out — out of the team, not marriage. In 2009, Gautam Gambhir skipped a Test, against Sri Lanka, to be at his sister’s marriage. At that time, a TV channel had done a show asking “Desh bada hai ya behen?”. That was very insensitive, even idiotic.

The schedule of the cricketers is so completely packed that they must miss some matches to be part of important events in their families. After the current Test series, India and Sri Lanka play six ODI/T20I matches. Immediately after that, India leave for a tough tour of South Africa, and would be away for two months. Bhuvneshwar, thus, had a very small window of opportunity to get married in whatever remains of this year.