xtratime Logo

XtraTime Web Desk: The BCCI has denied all the speculations that Virat Kohli won’t be attending an pre departure press conference ahead of Indian cricket team’s tour to West Indies and later today they confirmed that the Indian captain will take questions from the media at a Mumbai hotel on Monday before the departure.

There were earlier reports that suggested that Virat might skip the pre-departure press conference amid rumours of rift between him and vice-captain Rohit Sharma. But the BCCI have put an end to all those speculations by confirming Virat’s presence in the media interaction on Monday. Here are all the details of the press conference:-

The Indian side will leave for the US on Monday, where they will play two T20Is before travelling to the West Indies for the final T20I, three ODIs, and two Test matches. The members of the Test side – barring those who are already in West Indies with India A team – will travel later.

“There will be no pre-departure press conference by the Indian team leaving for the West Indies. There is no window for a press conference ahead of the departure. We tried but it was not possible,” a BCCI source told ANI.

There is a lot of anticipation about Kohli’s press conference after multiple media outlets started reporting about a rift between him and Rohit ever since the Men in Blue returned home after their semi-final exit from World Cup 2019.

The reports were fueled after Rohit Sharma “unfollowed” skipper Virat Kohli’s wife Anushka Sharma on Instagram.

The trouble apparently started brewing post the loss to England in the World Cup. The bowling unit supposedly felt humiliated post a team meeting after the defeat in the group-stage encounter.

“The bowlers were given a showdown after the loss and they felt that it wasn’t just a case of bad bowling and there were more areas that needed to be looked into before pointing fingers at the bowling unit,” a source in the know of developments said.

Another board functionary said that the reports of rift need to be addressed at the earliest to avoid a scenario wherein the performance of the team can start getting affected.

“It is like any other discord at a workplace which can affect the performance of the team. If this is not nipped in the bud immediately, there is a real danger of things affecting the spirit of the team and as a result, their performance.

“You cannot have two leaders of a team or their media teams taking pot-shots at one another. There is no denial of a rift and the big shot administrator says that it is a media creation. If that is the case why are they giving impetus to the media creation rather than dispelling it,” the functionary said.