India’s cricket captain Anil Kumble has slammed a reported “retirement plan” for senior players.
Reports in India today claimed that the Board of Control for Cricket in India had set up a plan by which the senior players need to arrange their retirements. A kind of cricket suttee by the sounds of it.
The president of the BCCI Shashank Manohar has been linked to the “voluntary retirement” plan.
But Kumble directed his criticism at a convenient target: the media.
He said the exit plan for himself, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Saurav Ganguly (all players well into their 30s) was the result of irresponsible reporting.
“[The media] needs to be a bit more respectful when people discuss cricketers,” Kumble told a press conference today. “We don’t mind the scrutiny but when it is done really rubbishly and the way it has been portrayed, then it hurts.”
A BCCI official said on Wednesday that the five had been told to plan their retirements by December but Kumble said: “No one has spoken to us on these terms and neither have we, but it’s all happening in the media.”

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