When Indian men’s cricket team captain Virat Kohli was granted leave by the BCCI to attend the birth of his first child with wife and actor Anushka Sharma, mixed feelings were shown—some lauded it, saying it was time that paternity leave was normalised, and others were unfamiliar with the concept, to say the least.
The paternity leave has left several fans incensed especially after India’s humiliating loss in the first Test, in which the visitors scored just 36 runs in the second innings—their lowest score ever in the longest format.
However, the debate over Kohli’s paternity leave is still raging as former India cricketer Sunil Gavaskar has revealed that different rules are laid for different players, citing the case of T. Natarajan.
In a column for Sportstar, Gavaskar exposed the double standards of the Indian team management.
“Another player who will wonder about the rules, but, of course, can’t make any noise about it as he is a newcomer. It is T. Natarajan,” he wrote.
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“The left-arm yorker specialist who made an impressive debut in the T20 and had Hardik Pandya gallantly offering to share the man of the T20 series prize with him had become a father for the first time even as the IPL playoffs were going on.”
The left-arm pacer, who played for Sunrisers Hyderabad, had become a father before the 2020 Indian Premier League, and as he was part of the back-up bowling unit for the Australia tour, he was not granted paternity leave.
“He was taken to Australia directly from UAE and then looking at his brilliant performances, he was asked to stay on for the Test series but not as a part of the team but as a net bowler. Imagine that. A match-winner, albeit in another format, being asked to be a net bowler. He will thus return home only after the series ends in the third week of January and get to see his daughter for the first time then. And there is the captain going back after the first Test for the birth of his first child. That’s Indian cricket,” Gavaskar wrote.
The batting legend was also not given paternity leave when India had toured the West Indies in 1976.
Kohli would miss the remaining three Test matches against Australia, and the skipper’s absence could affect the morale of a team that has just experienced one of its worst defeats in history. However, many players have shown their faith for skipper Ajinkya Rahane who will lead the team for the remainder of the series.
India and Australia go head to head again on Saturday for the marquee Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.