Sunil Gavaskar has urged the BCCI to mandate a one-month sabbatical for India’s senior cricketers, cautioning that frequent squad rotation and rigorous workload management are diminishing the significance of playing for the nation.
Just days after the end of IPL 2026, India just finished a one-off Test and a 3-0 ODI series sweep against Afghanistan under Shubman Gill. Gavaskar stated that player welfare must now come first, even as he acknowledged the BCCI’s efforts to promote developing cricket nations like Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka through bilateral tours.
”India is blessed with talent and you can rotate players, but that is cheapening the India cap. The cap mustn’t be given because a player replaces an undroppable player who is rested. It has to be earned,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for the Mumbai newspaper Mid-Day.
Gavaskar said that India should always field its best lineup and questioned the rising tendency of resting important players only to manage workloads.
Gavaskar brought up the latest Afghanistan Test, pointing out that while Manav Suthar made an impressive debut and Shubman Gill and KL Rahul got hundreds, Jasprit Bumrah, who was rested, lost a chance to greatly improve his record.
”When India is playing, the best team must play, unless there are injuries,” he wrote.
Noting that the last two ODIs against Afghanistan in Lucknow and Chennai were played in front of half-empty stands, Gavaskar also connected India’s unrelenting cricket schedule to a decline in audience engagement.
The senior team should have an uninterrupted month off each year, he said, but the India ‘A’ and Under-19 teams should keep touring to nurture future talent.
”Please spare our elite players and ensure they, as a team and not just as individuals, get at least a month’s break in the year,” Gavaskar said, adding that fans too would benefit from a breather in an increasingly crowded calendar.
