Baffling to read lies, disrespectful to drag personal lives: Virat on rift with Rohit Sharma
Mumbai, July 29: Indian captain Virat Kohli on Monday categorically refuted rumours of a rift with his deputy Rohit Sharma, saying "people feeding off lies" are being disrespectful to the players' personal lives.
After India's ouster from the World Cup, stories of fissures in the Indian camp emerged with claims that Rohit and Kohli are not seeing eye to eye.
Theories of split captaincy were also floated.
"In my opinion, its baffling. It's absolutely ridiculous to read these kind of stuff, that comes out there. I have been to public events where we have been praised and here we are feeding off lies, overlooking facts, turning a blind eye to all good things that happened and creating fantasies and scenarios in our head. We want to accept that this is the truth," Kohli said.
Adding fuel to all the speculations was a cryptic instagram post by Kohli's actress wife Anushka Sharma, which was later deleted.
"I have seen this for too long now. Bringing personal lives into the picture. It's disrespectful after a moment. I have played the game for 11 years and Rohit has played for 10 years (12 years) and it's bizarre that people are creating this stuff from outside," the skipper said, with coach Ravi Shastri by his side.
Shastri made a tongue-in-cheek comment about the conspiracy theories.
"Very soon you will hear wives batting and bowling. The way this team plays, no individual is bigger than the game. Not me, not him, nobody in the team. I have a been a part of that dressing room and none of the nonsense is there," the commentator in the former all-rounder came out as he pooh-poohed the rumours.
For Kohli, the Indian team couldn't have performed consistently across formats if there was no camaraderie amongst the players.
"I have also heard a lot of things. Now you can only hear things from outside. If the dressing room environment had been bad, then we couldn't have possibly played the quality of cricket that we played.
"Because I know how the dressing room environment and trust factor becomes important to succeed in international cricket. The journey that we have had in ODIs, in Tests (from No 7 to 1) and T20s, that wouldn't have been possible without camaraderie, respect and understanding," said Kohli, who urged people to come and see the atmosphere in the change-room.
"You people please come to our change room and see, how we speak to a Kuldeep Yadav, how we crack a joke with the senior-most player MS Dhoni. We can't shoot a video and show you guys. It baffles you as a leader, when lies are being floated around to make it look like actually they are believable," Kohli sounded irritated.
He emphatically denied that there could be any awkwardness between him and Rohit due to the events in the past few days.
"If I don't like a person or if I am insecure about a person, you will see it on my face or my behaviour towards the person and that's how simple it is," Kohli said.
"I have always praised Rohit whenever I have got an opportunity because I believe he is that good. I don't know who is benefitting from all of this but we are living, breathing towards getting Indian cricket to the top, and here we get some kind of pleasure in bringing Indian cricket down," the skipper said.
It's time that we all do some introspection, he felt.
"We have to reflect as cricketers everyone can take a step back and think are we creating something that's really not out there. You can't play with that kind of passion if you don't get along with each other. As I said, its baffling and its time that we focus on taking Indian cricket forward," he said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Over 77 per cent of India's children lack WHO-suggested diversity in diet, study finds
New Delhi, Oct 23: About 77 per cent of children in India aged 6-23 months lack diversity in diet as suggested by the WHO, with the country's central region showing the highest prevalence of minimum dietary failure, a study has found.
The states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh reported the highest levels of inadequate diversity in children's diets -- all above 80 per cent -- while Sikkim and Meghalaya were the only two to report an under-50 per cent prevalence.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) suggests using the Minimum Dietary Diversity (MDD) score to evaluate the quality of a child's diet -- it is considered to be diverse if it contains five or more food groups, including breastmilk, eggs, legumes and nuts, and fruits and vegetables.
Analysing National Family and Health Survey data from 2019-21 (NFHS-5), researchers, including those from the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, found that the country's overall rate of minimum dietary diversity failure has dropped from 87.4 per cent, which was calculated using data from 2005-06 (NFHS-3).
However, "our study shows that the prevalence of minimum dietary diversity failure remains high (above 75 per cent) in India," the authors wrote in the study published in the National Medical Journal of India.
The team also looked at children's dietary habits across various food groups like proteins and vitamins, comparing data from 2019-21 with that from 2005-06.
The consumption of eggs registered an "impressive" rise, from around 5 per cent in NFHS-3 to over 17 per cent in NFHS-5 while that of legumes and nuts increased from nearly 14 per cent during 2005-06 to over 17 per cent during 2019-21.
"The consumption of vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables increased by 7.3 percentage points, whereas the consumption of fruits and vegetables increased by 13 percentage points over the same time. For flesh foods, the consumption increased by 4 percentage points," the authors wrote.
However, the consumption of breastmilk and dairy products was found to drop from 87 per cent in NFHS-3 to 85 per cent in NFHS-5 and 54 per cent to 52 per cent, respectively.
The authors also found that the children of illiterate and rural-residing mothers having no exposure to mass media, those born first and not exposed to counselling and health check-ups at Anganwadi or Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres were more likely to be consuming diets deficient in diversity.
Anaemic children and those having a low birth weight were also found to have a higher chance of consuming a non-diverse diet.
To tackle the issue of inadequate diversity in children's diets, the authors called for a holistic approach from the government, including an improved public distribution system, intensified ICDS programme, use of social media and nutrition counselling through local self-governance.
