On Sunday, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly revealed that the Indian team will be touring to Sri Lanka in July for a limited-overs bilateral series without the top players. Big names such as skipper Virat Kohli and deputy Rohit Sharma will not be part of the tour as they will be engaged in a marquee five-match Test series in England.
During an interaction with PTI, Sourav Ganguly said, “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. Yes, it will be a team of white-ball specialists. It will be a different team.”
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There will be at least 5 T20Is and maybe three ODIs in Sri Lanka. India’s tour of England will be concluding on September 14 and with the schedule of the remainder of IPL yet to be chalked out, the BCCI would want the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Yuzvendra Chahal to be match ready.
As per the quotes in PTI, a BCCI source said, “The BCCI president is very keen that all our top players are match ready and since England doesn’t have a white ball leg the month of July can be utilized well.”
For the Kohlis and Sharmas, they need not come from the UK, which has in place some hard quarantine rules.
Describing the same, the source said, “Technically, in the month of July, there are no official senior India team matches. The Test squad will be playing intrasquad games. So there is no harm in India’s white-ball experts getting some match time and selectors also get to fix the missing jigsaws in selection puzzle.”
This will give the team a chance to carry out experiments, like the forms of Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, or Rahul Tewatia and who will be the leg-break bowler for India or if Chetan Sakariya can be tried as a left-arm option, whether Devdutt Padikkal or Shreyas Iyer gets fit to play by then.
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Not to forget that Prithvi Shaw’s international career can also get a boost with this white ball tournament, with Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan also getting a chance to make a case for themselves.
