BCCI’s Future Plan: BCCI secretary Jay Shah claims that in the future there will be two different Indian teams where one team will play the white-ball series in one country while the other team will engage in another series in some other country.
BCCI’s Future Plan
BCCI have already experimented this idea of two Indian cricket teams playing in two different countries. In 2021, for the very first time, India simultaneously played two series against two different countries.
While Virat Kohli led India took on England, a separate team under Shikhar Dhawan was playing in Sri Lanka. Notably, current Indian cricket team head coach Rahul Dravid was named as the coach for the Shikhar Dhawan-led Indian cricket team.
According to BCCI secretary Jay Shah, cricket fans might get to see a similar situation in the future as Indian cricket will have enough players in its roster to manage the workload as well as field two different teams at the same time.
“I have had discussions with NCA head VVS Laxman and we will always have 50 players in our roster. In future, you will have a scenario, where the Indian Test team will be playing a series in one country and the white-ball team will be engaged in a series in a different country. We are going in that direction where we will have two national teams ready at the same time,” he told PTI.
With the BCCI planning a bigger window for IPL in upcoming seasons to accommodate more number of matches, Shah clarified that the move won’t impact India’s bilateral series calendar.
“That is an aspect we have worked upon. Let me inform you that from the next ICC FTP calendar, IPL will have an official two-and-a-half-month window so that all the top international cricketers can participate. We have had discussions with various boards as well as the ICC,” he said.
Furthermore, he said that BCCI is trying its best to strengthen the weaker nations by playing against them, citing the upcoming two T20Is against Ireland.
“Indian cricket will remain strong as long as world cricket remains strong. Let me assure you of this. The BCCI is committed to international cricket. And it’s not just about India versus Australia or India versus England marquee series, we are committed to playing even the smaller nations.
All bilateral international commitments across all formats will be honoured. We are playing Ireland in two T20 Internationals this month only. We want a strong robust international circuit and want to help the smaller cricketing nations by playing against them.”
