India women’s team will return to play international cricket after a gap of almost 12 months as BCCI will be hosting an eight-match long series against the South African Women’s team in the month of March. Lucknow is set to be the venue for all the limited-overs games.
The Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association has notified on February 23 about this latest breaking and they stated, “India vs South Africa Women’s 5 ODI and 3 T-20 Series would be hosted by us at Bharat Ratna Shree Atal Bihari Bajpayee Ekana Int Stadium.”
The series will first commence with five One-Dayers scheduled for March 7, 10, 12, 14, and 17 respectively. While the T20I leg of the series will be held on March 20, 22, and 24 respectively. Both the teams are arriving in Lucknow from February 25 for the mandated 6-day long quarantine period and practice camps.
This will be the Indian team’s first outing after Women’s T20 Challenge hosted in Sharjah last year. Whereas, some players like Jemimah Rodrigues, Radha Yadav, Arundhati Reddy, and Deepti Sharma played a local T20 tournament in January. Meanwhile, the Proteas are coming in from the white-ball series victory against Pakistan.
While commenting on the stadium UPCA secretary Yudhvir Singh said, “Our stadium is blessed to have nine pitches, including five of red clay, so there would be no problem in holding the entire series at this venue.”
The UPCA authorities are seeing this series as an opportunity to showcase the world-class stadium that they have built in Lucknow and seek the shot to host matches of the Indian Premier League and the forthcoming ICC T20 World Cup.
The series was earlier supposed to be held at the Greenfield Sports Hub Stadium in Thiruvanthapuram but Kerala Cricket Association expressed its inability to stage the matches as stadium owners had booked an Army recruitment drive on the same dates.