Tensions continue to rise ahead of the Boxing Day Test, and now the Indian media is joining in on the national side’s anger with the Australian team.
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A planned media match was boycotted a day after a controversial incident at the MCG where a scheduled press conference with India’s Ravindra Jadeja was turned into a Hindi-only chat before he left.
Indian media and backroom team members were scheduled to play a friendly T20 match against Team Australia at Junction Oval in Melbourne on Sunday after being hosted by Cricket Australia.
However, The Age reported that India’s media manager played a central role in the MCG chaos, leading media members to follow his lead and boycott the event after the match was canceled due to a lack of players to field a full team.
No one wanted to hold it! | 00:54
That only adds to the bizarre behind-the-scenes battle that broke out on Saturday.
After a 30-minute delay in his scheduled media appearance, Jadeja began fielding questions from Indian journalists. Answering this first series of English questions is a process that deviates from the standard procedure.
After nine minutes of discussion in Hindi, India’s media manager ended the press conference before local reporters could ask Jadeja anything. This despite requests from some attendees to respond in English.
India’s reason for Jadeja’s departure was that he may have missed the team bus.
Following Jadeja’s departure, one journalist was heard telling the media manager that the deal was “chaotic and hopeless”.
India’s media manager also asked Channel 9 to turn off the cameras running on the ground, and journalist Trent Kniese was heard reminding him: “He’s allowed to film.”
This comes just days after an altercation broke out at Melbourne Airport after Virat Kohli was seen having a lively conversation with a journalist over allegations that he had been filming his family and children.
There is no suggestion that there is a problem with the press conference starting in a language other than English, but Sydney Morning Herald writer Tom Decent noted that it was highly unusual for there to be no questions in the host country’s language. It doesn’t matter if it’s Australian or travel media.
Some reporters wrote online that Saturday’s event was only for the travel press, but that claim has since been dismissed.
Contrary to reports by some Australian journalists, some Indian media outlets denied the allegations of a one-sided press conference.
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Rev Sportz’s Subhayan Chakraborty attended the press conference and later claimed “Australian media is coming back and you can call it the dark arts”.
Chakraborty said the Australian media “didn’t create an uproar” when fast bowler Harshit Rana spoke only in Hindi to reporters in the first Test.
“Some Australian media attended the press conference. They misbehaved with Indian media managers and some journalists in a visually offensive manner. Ideally, their video journalists should not have recorded private conversations at the MCG, despite our repeated requests.” The Indian journalist spoke to Rev Sportz in the aforementioned article.
sen Cricket commentator Bharat Sundaresan again shared his vision of the press conference for X with the following caption: “Everything.”
The fourth Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series begins at 10.30am (AEDT) on Thursday with the series level at 1-1.
