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It allowed players to open themselves to their colleagues: Shastri on bio-bubble

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India thumped England by an innings and 25 runs in the fourth and final Test in Ahmedabad to win the series 3-1. The win also took India into the finals of the World Test Championship. They will now lock horns with New Zealand in the title clash in June. 

While the Indian team had performed exceptionally well making strong comebacks both against Australia and England after losing the first match of the Test series, head coach Ravi Shastri in a virtual press conference talked about bio-bubble and how the players have been dealing with it. 

“There is no choice, there are restricted team areas, so you can’t go out, meet anyone and the same exists now,” Shastri said at a virtual press conference

“So if you want to get out of the room, go into a team area, where you meet other players, so what it’s done basically is, it has made players meet each other more often after playing hours. And when you meet more often, somewhere down the line there will be conversations regarding the game,” the head coach added.

The head coach said that whenever the players met during this time, they only had the option of talking about the game which eventually helped them and they also understood each other well.

“So, I think the best thing that has happened is talking cricket amongst the team members and they had no choice, so they were forced to do it and that’s been a big help,” he said.

“They have gotten to understand each others’ background, mental state, where they come from, where they are in life, settled, unsettled.”

“It allowed them to open themselves to their colleagues a lot more, discuss personal issues, you know more freely, win more trust from the team members, a lot of positives like you mentioned because of this bubble,” he said.

Shastri mentioned about the Australia tour and how the team made some strong statements during the course. The former India player further added that he knew the players would take time to come into the groove as they haven’t got out of their houses for a long time. 

“You had to be patient more than anything else. We started with two losses in Australia in ODIs. In normal circumstances, you can get straight to the point. You can be aggressive, you can make the most painful point with an individual and he’ll pull up his socks,” added 58-year-old Shastri.

“But I had made up my mind with my team management that we’re going to show empathy because for six months, a lot of the guys had not got out of their flats. No one lives in farms in India, some do, some don’t.”

Hailing the team, Shastri said that the team takes “pride” in winning and give it all when the players are out in the middle. 

“This team takes pride in winning, this team doesn’t mind losing as long as they throw punches, so it was just a matter of being patient for that one switch of that result and it happened in the third ODI game (in Australia) through some brilliance from Hardik (Pandya) and Jaddu (Ravindra Jadeja) and then you didn’t look back,” he signed off.





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