'Every player has right to step away from bio-bubble', John Gloster urges people and selectors to be sensitive

The coronavirus pandemic has forced cricket to be played in a different way. Before the pandemic, teams would take their own time to arrive with a limited squad, interact potentially with fans and media personnel and get themselves conditioned to the noise of thousands of fans in the stadium. With the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the game changed. Cricket was being played behind closed doors which meant no fans were in attendance. Players had to live in a bio-bubble, which meant minimal interaction and being confined to the four corners of their hotel rooms. In order to arrive on tour, players would have to get quarantined for some days or weeks in order to resume normalcy.

The 'new normal' in the period of the coronavirus pandemic has brought many challenges. The issue of players being mentally fatigued living in the bio-bubble has become a major issue. Recently, the Indian cricket team spent six months in the bio-bubble in the IPL in UAE as well as in Australia. The issue reached boiling point when they had to undergo another hard quarantine in Brisbane which they flatly refused. England, on the other hand, lived in a bio-bubble during the series against Pakistan, West Indies and Australia for close to three months while some players in the IPL also had an additional two months in the bio-bubble.

Speaking exclusively to Zee News English from Abu Dhabi, former India cricket team physio and Delhi Bulls physio John Gloster has said players who step away from the bio-bubble must have sympathy from selectors and people. "Players have right to step out of bio-bubbles whenever they see it fit. People and more specifically selectors should be much more sensitive to the need to the cricketers and it should not be held against them for future selections. Every player has the right to step away because you have to consider that a lot of them have lost family members or close friends which is a massive loss to deal with," Gloster said.

Physical threat as well

John Gloster also reckons that mental fitness woes could impact even physical health in the long run. This might have been one of the reasons why India's players broke down with so many injuries in the tour against Australia. "The players who are struggling mentally in these bio-bubbles often end up manifesting into physical injuries. We have an intimate understanding of the match pressure that players are under but there is no escape mechanism for them in these bio-bubbles if we don't provide them adequate support," Delhi Bulls physio John Gloster said.

In times of the coronavirus pandemic, the role of the physio has changed considerably with mental health also in focus. "The physio of any team is an integral part of the medical team which handles the bio-bubbles as well as the COVID-19 Standard Operating Protocols (SOP). Apart from the physical side of the players’ well-being, they now need to have a good understanding of mental health as well. We need to deliver essential things to a cricketer apart from training equipment and these might be different for every player like a PlayStation for one, table tennis for another and F1 simulation games for the other," John Gloster said.