The India tour of Australia, scheduled for the end of this year, will begin with a white-ball series before the Test matches take place.
India tour of Australia
A full series in Australia usually begins with the Test series before the ODI and T20I matches are played, thus representing a break in tradition for Cricket Australia.
Test Match Venues
“The tour will commence with a white-ball component before the four-Test series, at this stage, begins in Adelaide on December 17-21. Other venues include Melbourne (December 26-30), Sydney (January 7-11), and Brisbane (January 15-19),” says a report in The Australian.
CA chief Earl Eddings also put to rest any lingering doubts over the tour being potentially called off, saying he has been in touch with BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and knows the matches will take place.
“I’m 100 percent confident they are coming. Sourav Ganguly and I talk about it most days and we are already planning when we can catch up once he and the team get over here,” the paper quoted Eddings as saying.
The report also added that Virat Kohli and co. will land in Brisbane instead of Perth or Adelaide and will not face much strictness in terms of quarantine time despite the state of Queensland currently seeing severe restrictions.
Tim Paine’s View
Meanwhile, Australia Test skipper Tim Paine rejected apprehensions that the IPL stints of team’s star players — such as batting mainstay Steve Smith and pacer Pat Cummins — would leave them under-prepared for the eagerly-awaited red-ball series against India in December.
Former skipper Smith, opener David Warner and top fast bowlers Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, and James Pattinson are currently playing for different teams in the 13th edition of IPL in UAE.
The IPL will conclude on November 10, while a four-round block of Australia’s domestic Sheffield Shield gets underway in Adelaide this weekend, with the final game of the block between New South Wales and Victoria starting November 17.
Paine feels it is unlikely that the IPL players will get enough time to participate in Shield cricket ahead of the India series with a mandatory 14-day quarantine rule in place for international arrivals in Australia due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I wouldn’t have thought so, with restrictions coming back into the country,” he was quoted as saying on Tuesday by 7news.com.au.
