India are set to travel to Sri Lanka for limited-overs fixtures in July. While the Indian stars like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma will be in England for the WTC final against New Zealand and a five-match Test series against the English side, a second team will travel to Sri Lanka for a three-match ODI series and as many T20Is.
The BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal has now explained the reason behind sending another team to Sri Lanka for white-ball matches.
“We had to miss Sri Lanka tour last year also. So, we need to work out on that. Since our team that is going to England is primarily for Tests, we could have made up (sic) a team for these white-ball matches. So, that is why we thought we should do our bit to make sure Sri Lankan board and we can play white-ball cricket in time,” Dhumal was quoted as saying.
Dhumal further told that the series has been planned to make up for the losses that associations had suffered after a number of matches were cancelled due to Covid-19 outburst.
“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 (sic), which has put a lot of strain 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 their financial struggle that they are going through,” Dhumal added.
The team for the Sri Lanka tour is yet to be announced by the selectors.