Bipin Dani (MID-DAY; August 22, 2014)

Defeat is never a pleasant experience and quite predictably blame games have begun after India’s humiliation in the five-Test series against England. In a swift move a couple of days ago, the BCCI appointed Ravi Shastri as the Team Director for the remainder of the tour and sent the fielding and bowling coaches on leave. This decision has virtually put chief coach Duncan Fletcher on notice.

Thereafter, the focus has now shifted to players and all those, who accompanied them during the series. It has emerged that actress Anushka Sharma giving company to Virat Kohli did not go down too well with the manager of the Indian Test side, Sunil Dev.

On returning to his hometown Delhi yesterday, Dev told mid- day that he wasn’t too happy with the actress’ presence. “I would have objected to her presence, but was helpless when I realised that permission was granted by BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) secretary Sanjay Patel.”

Prez not in loop?
He added: “I doubt whether the secretary even spoke to the interim BCCI president Shivlal Yadav before granting permission. I am sure he (Yadav) would have turned down the request. Anushka stayed with Virat till the third Test. Foreign players do take their girlfriends on tours, but India’s culture is different.
Indian society doesn’t allow girlfriend on tour like this.”

When approached for his comment, Virat’s elder brother, Vikas, refused to comment on whether Anushka’s presence in England was a source of distraction to the ace batsman ( who aggregated only 134 runs in the five Tests).

Virat is known to have a huge female fan following and earlier this year English women’s cricketer Danielle Wyatt had jokingly expressed her desire to marry the batsman. Then, his mother Saroj, had said: “He has just started playing cricket. He has to concentrate on his career.”

Virat's scores
1st Test 1 & 8
2nd Test 25 & 0
3rd Test 39 & 28
4th Test 0 & 7
5th Test 6 & 20