The Twenty20 dose will not end with just the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the country as the Indian team is set to take on South Africa immediately after. Rohit Sharma & Co will be involved in a five-match series which will be played across the country in June. The series will run for 10 days before the Indian team takes off to England for an unfinished Test and six white-ball matches.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has already stated that the IPL will be held in Mumbai and Pune from March 26 to May 29 and just about 10 days later the Twenty20 series against South Africa will start. “This is part of the FTP and there were always to be played after the IPL,” a BCCI official said.
The Apex Council of the BCCI, which met on Wednesday (March 2), decided on the schedule for the South Africa series and the games will be held from June 9 to 19. The venues will be Cuttack, Vizag, Delhi, Rajkot and Chennai.
Bengaluru and Nagpur were to get the games in the series but Cuttack and Vizag have been allotted the matches instead, presumably because the two centres missed out on the Twenty20 fixtures during recent West Indies series. The BCCI conducted the six matches against West Indies in only two centres – Ahmedabad and Kolkata – with an aim to cut down on travel.