Press conference will not be held by Virat Kohli ahead of West Indies tour

Indian skipper Virat Kohli will not be holding a press conference, which is a norm before the Indian team leaves for a series. The Indian side is supposed to leave for the US on Monday. In the US they will play two T20Is before travelling to West Indies. The final T20I, three ODIs, and two Test matches will be played in West Indies. The members of the Test side – barring those who are already in West Indies with India A team – will travel later.

Kohli will attend a promotional event on Monday morning before boarding the flight. But he will not take any questions regarding the West Indies tour. Rohit, on the other hand, has remained tight-lipped about the whole incident.

The gossip columns are filled with :

Kohli’s press conference after multiple media reports about a rift between him and Rohit started doing the rounds.

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

The trouble 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. 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.”

“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.