The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have announced that India will be playing 11 Twenty 20 (T20) international matches ahead of ICC T20 World Cup 2016, which is scheduled to happen in India.
India will be touring to Bangladesh in June and post that they will be touring Zimbabwe where they will play two T20 games. After that, they will have three against South Africa at home and three more in Australia towards the end of this year and finally three more against Sri Lanka at home just ahead of the start of the T20 World Cup in March-April.
The dates of the South Africa's tour of India have also been brought forward. Previously, they were supposed to arrive in October and play till late November and now according to the schedule they will come in September for a full series.
According to reports, the schedule has provision for more T20 matches as the current schedule did not include the Asia T20 tournament, which is likely to happen just ahead of the World T20 tournament.
This effort from BCCI to schedule a number of T20 matches for India is because they have played a very few T20 games before they went on to play the last T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in 2014 and post that they have only played one T20 match against England during India's tour of England in 2014, reported ESPN cricinfo.
Indians are placed at eighth position when it comes to playing T20 matches (53 matches till date). So technically, India's cricket team remains one of the least experienced in this shorter format of the game.
India's upcoming schedule:
July: 3 ODIs, 2 T20Is in Zimbabwe.
August: 3 Tests in Sri Lanka.
September-October: 4 Tests, 5 ODIs, 3 T20Is vs South Africa in India.
January: 5 ODIs, 3 T20s in Australia.
February: 3 T20s vs Sri Lanka in India.
