Team India are currently making headlines with the rumours of a rift among the players in the dressing room during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25. These rumours caught fire after India captain Rohit Sharma decided not to feature in the fifth Test match of the five Test match series. Rohit's decision not to feature in the Sydney Test, came after a media report claimed that all is not well in India's Border-Gavaskar Trophy-bound team. Reportedly, signs of discord were evident from the start of the two-month tour.
India-based journalist Bharat Sundaresan revealed on Channel 7 that he had heard about unease in the Indian dressing room as early as after the first Test which was played in Perth. After a commanding 295-run victory under Jasprit Bumrah’s captaincy in the series opener, the Indian team reportedly chose not to celebrate the historic win together.
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He revealed that a senior member of the coaching staff had offered his credit card to encourage the team to celebrate the victory as a group. However, the players opted to spend time with their families and close acquaintances instead of gathering for drinks together.
"After the Perth win, such a significant win in the history of Indian cricket, the fact that they didn’t celebrate that as a team and went their own ways didn’t tell me it was a broken dressing room. But it was a dressing room where there are different blokes, generationally and otherwise, who are just doing their own things," he said.
"This, I am told, is despite one of the senior support staff members saying, 'Here, I will put in my credit card, let’s all order some drinks, stick together.' But that was not meant to be. I thought a win like that would bring things together and energise this as one collective. As we’ve seen, as the series has gone on, it took that one bad loss in Melbourne—where it was one bad session, and they lost a Test match they fought hard in—for those simmering uncertainties, not really tensions, to surface and become public," he added.
Sources close to Sports Tak revealed that head coach Gautam Gambhir revealed that was not happy with the team's performance after the Boxing Day Test.
Addressing the team’s underperformance, Gambhir wanted to say "Tum log jaag rahe ho ya nahi? (Are you guys going to wake up or not?)" but tempered the tone and said, "Just because I haven’t spoken much doesn’t mean you can take things for granted".
Coming back to the five-Test match series, Team India failed to perform after winning the first Test match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25. Australia are leading 2-1 after winning the fourth Test match and both teams are currently playing the fifth Test match taking place at Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney.