BCCI monitoring off-duty India stars’ availability in domestic circuit

“The BCCI will continue to monitor player availability and participation in the upcoming domestic cricket season, 2024-25.” This statement included in the BCCI press release on Thursday, which announced India’s T20I and ODI squads for the tour of Sri Lanka, is a clear message to India internationals to remain available for competitions in the domestic circuit whenever they are are not selected for the Indian team.

While the 2024-25 domestic season begins only in September with the Duleep Trophy, the statement is a kind of manadate from the BCCI with an imprint of India’s new head coach Gautam Gambhir, who has been vocal about players featuring in all three formats and honing their skills accordingly.

The reason for this monitoring also has its roots in the controversy that led to Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan’s exclusion from the list of BCCI-contracted players, after the duo skipped matches for their respective state teams.

So the BCCI will not only gauge the performance of the players in the domestic circuit but also keep an eye on whether international players, when not on India duty, have made themselves available for domestic competitions or not.
According to a report in Cricbuzz, the topic came up for discussion during the selection committee meeting on Thursday.

After reports of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli not being available for the three-match ODI series on the Sri Lanka tour, the BCCI officials had spoken to both the players, as per the report. Consequently, Rohit and Kohli, both of who retired from T20Is after the World Cup last month, were among the ODI squad named for the tour. However, the board decided to let bowling spearhead Jasprit Bumrah rest as part of workload management.