While key players will be playing World Test Championship final and test series against England, an alternate squad will play a bilateral limited over series against Sri Lanka in July. For this series, BCCI is preparing to give white-ball specialists much-needed playing time.
BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal believes that this series will help Sri Lanka Cricket to cope with the financial losses due to the pandemic. While talking to Sportskeeda, Dhumal insisted that pandemic has created a lot of problems for various cricket associations across the globe. Dhumal explained that the series was originally supposed to take place last year but because of the pandemic, it came to an unexpected halt.
“See as you know the cricket world is under tremendous pressure for the last one-and-a-half year given this COVID pandemic, a lot of FTP has been cancelled which has put a lot of strains on these associations all over the world. Until and unless you do these tours, we can’t make up, and it would be very difficult for all these boards to come out of the financial struggle that they are going through.”
BCCI decided to resume the series that was supposed to begin in July last year. One team led by Virat Kohli would be in England to play two-test series, while the other squad is expected to play white-ball cricket against Sri Lanka.
Some of the very big names in the India team like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jasprit Bumrah would not play against Sri Lanka as they are a part of the test squad for both the series against NZ and England. BCCI president, Sourav Ganguly had also mentioned that this series would only feature white-ball specialists. Shikhar Dhawan is reportedly favourite to lead this team.
The series against Sri Lanka would have 6 fixtures in total, three ODIs, and three T-20Is. The ODI segment will be on July 13, 16, and 19, while the T-20 game will be played on July 22, 24, 27. All the matches will be played in Columbo, Sri Lanka as per the announcement by Sri Lanka cricket. India will be hoping to get a good picture of the final squad for the T-20 World Cup during the T-20 series against Sri Lanka.