ECB chiefs urge England's Test stars to stop talking and posting about golf

England's cricketers person been told by their bosses to halt talking astir play up of gathering up connected Sunday to hole for the Test against Zimbabwe aboriginal this month.

Rob Key, the ECB's managing manager of cricket, has besides asked them to refrain from posting astir it connected societal media.

The directive follows disapproval past wintertime that the limited-overs squad placed greater accent connected playing 18 holes than addressing their struggles against rotation successful India.

Key is acrophobic the hard enactment down the relaxed situation caput manager Brendon McCullum has created is successful information of being overlooked.

England's Test squad person utilized play for team-bonding and it features heavy connected wintertime tours.

Meanwhile, India are facing the 3rd Test status of 1 of their generational superstars wrong six months pursuing quality that Virat Kohli does not privation to circuit England this summer.

Kohli, 36, is understood to person told the Indian hierarchy that the clip is close for him to measurement distant fixed that the five-match bid against Ben Stokes' squad signals the commencement of a caller World Test Championship cycle.

Although the improvement has lone conscionable travel to light, helium has been successful discussions with Indian committee officials for weeks and is owed to sermon the contented further with main selector Ajit Agarkar successful the adjacent fewer days.

It follows the Test goodbyes of 2 38-year-olds since December: skipper Rohit Sharma calling it quits this week aft Ravichandran Ashwin's 106-cap vocation ended with a haul of 537 wickets.

If Kohli cannot beryllium persuaded to continue, helium volition discontinue arsenic India's astir palmy skipper - with 40 wins successful 68 matches - successful summation to 9230 runs astatine an mean of 46.85.

His idiosyncratic statistic person plunged implicit the past six years, however. At its highest successful 2019, his mean stood astatine 55.1 but his long-format performances person not maintained the level of his limited-overs ones since.

Last year, Kohli retired from Twenty20 internationals past July aft India won the World Cup and it was expected that helium would ore connected Tests fixed that bilateral one-day bid are connected the wane.

However, his lack from India's apical six would permission the tourists with a deficiency of acquisition and the lack of a omniscient caput to whoever is the caller captain.

Shubman Gill and Jasprit Bumrah are the favourites to win Rohit up of a circuit that has not been benignant to India successful presumption of caller results: they person won conscionable 4 and mislaid 13 successful the past 4 visits.