The BCCI confirmed that the Indian team will be travelling to Sri Lanka for a snow series in July later this year. With the Indian Test team and the regular coaches in England, the selectors will name a different team altogether for this tour. Moreover, it is understood that Rahul Dravid and NCA staff might travel with the team as coaches.
After the suspension of the IPL 2021, the focus has now shifted to the cricketing summer in England. While New Zealand play a couple of Test matches to kickstart the season, it is the World Test Championship final that everyone’s eyes are set on. India take on New Zealand in the title clash of the WTC in Southampton.
Virat Kohli and co will stay back in England after completing the WTC final and prepare for the five-match Test series, which starts on the 4th of August in Nottingham. India haven’t won a Test series in England for the last 14 years.
It recently came to light that India will be touring Sri Lanka for a short white-ball series in July. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly confirmed the same in his interview with PTI.
“We have planned a white ball series for the senior men’s team during the month of July where they will play T20 Internationals and ODIs in Sri Lanka,“
Ganguly was quoted saying to PTI.
The scheduling of the series raised doubts about whether the big stars who are a part of the Test team will travel to Sri Lanka and then fly back to England for the Test series. According to Cricbuzz, a BCCI office bearer confirmed that the Indian team that will travel to Sri Lanka will comprise of white-ball specialists only. No player from the tour of England will be available for this white-ball series against Sri Lanka.
Moreover, there are rumours doing rounds that Rahul Dravid and the staff at the National Cricket Academy might fly to Sri Lanka with the squad as coaches. It is no secret that Dravid has quite a bit of experience in terms of coaching. He was the coach of the India Under-19 side and also the India ‘A’ sides. The same office-bearer of the BCCI did not rule out the possibility of Dravid and co accompanying the team.
Shikhar Dhawan, Prithvi Shaw, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav are the international stars who are available for this tour. Shreyas Iyer’s shoulder injury and T Natarajan’s knee injury is likely to rule them out.
The tour will consist of three ODIs, and as many T20Is and the 50-over format will kickstart proceedings. The six white-ball games will be played across two weeks. It is reported that the ODI series will start on the 13th of July, with the next two scheduled for the 16th and 19th of July. Meanwhile, the T20Is are scheduled to kick off on the 22nd of July with the next two scheduled for the 24th and 27th of July.
However, the venues are yet to be decided. Also, it is likely that the Indian team might reach Sri Lanka in the first week of July. They will undergo seven days of quarantine, where they will be allowed to train after the first three days.
This will be India’s first bilateral tour to Sri Lanka since August-September 2017, where the Virat Kohli-led side whitewashed Sri Lanka in all three formats (3-0 in Tests, 5-0 in ODIs and 1-0 in the only T20I).
