Playing white ball cricket before Test matches against hosts England gives the Indian cricketers sufficient time to get used to the conditions in Old Blighty, head coach Ravi Shastri said.
India is to tour England, from late June, for a full tour comprising T20s, ODIs and then Tests.
” We will be there (in England) almost a month before the first Test match. We play some one-day cricket before the first Test match starts. We will kick-off the one-day games around 1st of July and the first Test starts August 1. That gives us that much more time (to prepare for Tests),” Shastri said at a book release function.
India are to start with a T20I in England on July 3. Shastri was happy that problems regarding lack of time for acclimatisation for an overseas Test rubber, as was the case before the Indian team’s tour of South Africa, have now been addressed by the Indian Cricket Board and CoA.
“To be fair to the BCCI and the CoA, those plans were (already) in place. It’s only when the new FTP kicks in in 2019, that’s when you can address those problems and they have been addressed,” he remarked.
