Bubble-hopping life of a player
It looks comfortable from the outside till you realise that at times cricketers aren’t even allowed to open room windows
KOLKATA: From one biosecure bubble to another for almost eight months together, that was the travel log of a regular multiformat India male cricketer since September, 2020. It began with the rescheduled IPL in the UAE, continued through the tour of Australia to a full home series against England, the IPL when the country was in the grip of a devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Once that bubble was breached and the IPL was postponed on May 3, he went home for a three-week break before reconvening in Mumbai for an eight-day hard quarantine to be travel ready for England.
For the World Test Championship final against New Zealand in Southampton, the team had to quarantine at the on-site hotel before being allowed to train. The tour of England came as a much needed respite from the bio bubbles as the UK government had lifted almost all Covidrelated curbs. But now, they are back in the UAE where they will live in strict bio bubbles for the IPL and then the T20 World Cup till mid-november.
No other team sport has endured so many bio-bubbles in different countries. Neither has any other sport undergone fundamental changes like stopping the use of saliva to shine the ball. Even as fans were allowed in tennis and football, cricket treaded with caution mainly because no other sport has a five-day version.
In the beginning, cricketers accepted bio-bubbles as a way of life and looked to make the most of the situation. “If we have to adjust, we have to adjust. And try and see how you can get the best out of this bubble life as well. Like we have had some good
times in the bubble. Especially during the IPL in the UAE (2020), we had some solid memories,” Rohit Sharma had said in a video posted on Mumbai Indians’ Twitter handle before the 2021 IPL.
“Plus the bubble life in Australia and now in India, when we played against England, it was good. We got to know a lot of players, who usually don’t come out of their room. So we had the team room, where we used to go out and chill. Which is something I feel has changed from the previous year. It’s nice to have the company around and have that bonding going.”
For the first seven months or so, all seemed fine with cricket in the bio-bubble. To ensure there were no loose ends to their Covid-related protocols, the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB)
earmarked Southampton and Manchester to host their summer series (involving West Indies, Pakistan and Australia) because of the presence of onsite hotels. Barring Jofra Archer, who took a detour to his home at Hove and thus had to sit out the second Test against West Indies, all three tours went by smoothly. The 2020 IPL in the UAE too went without a glitch, with teams and officials bunking in different hotels in Dubai and Abu Dhabi where Gps-enabled tracking was enforced on the strictest basis.
It looks comfortable from the outside: players lodged in plush hotels with room service and shuttles on standby. But the monotony can get to you. “We had to deal with what was presented to us then and there in Australia. Sometimes the hotels
can be very, very claustrophobic, so you don’t get fresh air also,” Ravichandran Ashwin said at the post-match virtual press conference during England’s tour in March. “And in Australia, there are situations where you didn’t have window panes opening also. For 14 days, or 20 days or 25 days to stay inside that without even opening the window panes can be quite taxing.”
The virus had not entered team hotels till then. The first major hiccup came in December when England abandoned their ODI tour of South Africa after a South Africa player and two members of hotel staff tested positive. England too announced two members of their party had returned “unconfirmed positive tests”. In January, India allowed partial capacity in Ahmedabad after playing to empty stands in
two Tests in Chennai but the tipping point came in the 2021 IPL two months later when the country was swamped by a daily rising wave of new cases. Despite several reassurances from the franchises that the IPL bubble was indeed safe, it was breached within three weeks.
Ashwin didn’t wait for the official postponement, leaving the bubble when he heard his family had been infected. “I couldn’t sleep for almost 8-9 days,” Ashwin said on his Youtube channel. “Since I couldn’t sleep, it was really stressful for me. I was playing matches without getting any sleep. And since I found it really taxing, I had to quit IPL and go home midway. In fact, when I left around that time, I had thoughts on whether I will be able to play cricket thereafter. But still, I did what was required at that point of time.”
By the time BCCI had arranged for cricketers and commentators to be flown to their countries, the Australian government had shut its borders to even its citizens. Michael Slater slammed his government, claiming the Australian prime minister had blood on his hands.
It started getting worse from there. In July, the entire England ODI squad had to self-isolate two days before the start of their series against Pakistan following seven positive tests in their bubble. Earlier this month, India and England agreed to abandon their five-test series after the fourth Test when India’s second physiotherapist—who was tending to most of the squad members after bulk of the support staff had to self-isolate—too returned a positive test. Schedules are going haywire but more importantly, players are becoming more prone to mental breakdowns. That bubble fatigue is a reality dawned on cricket when Ben Stokes pulled out of the Test series against India citing the need to take a break for his mental well-being and to recover from a finger injury.
This was long coming, and Virat Kohli was one of the first voices to raise this concern. “Scheduling needs to be looked at in future, because playing in bubbles for so long, two to three months, is going to be very, very difficult going forward,” Kohli had said just before the 2021 IPL. “You can’t expect everyone to be at the same level of mental strength. Sometimes you do get cooked and you do feel like a bit of a change.”
Quarantine workouts, extended pool sessions, table tennis in the common rooms or playing PUBG and FIFA help to some extent. Nothing beats the feel-good factor of families accompanying on tours, as has been the case for some time now. Defending the relaxed measures for touring players, ECB chief Tom Harrison said in August that cricket needs to learn to live with Covid. Which also means cricketers have no choice but get used to bio-bubbles.