Team India wanted to cancel Sri Lanka T20Is to prepare for South Africa series

The ongoing India tour of South Africa is not yielding any positive outcome for the Virat Kohli-led side as of now. The number one ranked side has lost the first two Tests of the 3-match series and it is proving to be a worrying factor for the management. Many pundits believe that the team did not get enough time to acclimatize to the South African conditions.

Truth be told, this has in fact been the reason. Team India were seen in action in the home series against Sri Lanka three days before they left for South Africa. This forced them to cancel out their warm up game as well. Now, as per the recent reports in Times of India, it has been found out that the Indian team were unhappy with the scheduling of the Sri Lanka series.

The Indian team hosted Sri Lanka for a full tour that comprised of Tests, ODIs and T20Is spanned across 44 day period. It is worth noting that a couple of months ago, the same two sides had met for a full tour in Sri Lanka as well. Hence, this Sri Lanka series was uncalled for. The Indian team had conveyed it to the BCCI to tweak the Sri Lanka series.

They wanted to have 6 ODIs and cancel out the Test series. Else, they had given the option to cancel out the T20I series. But the BCCI wanted to fill in the void left by the supposed Pakistan tour of India, which never saw the day light, around the same time.

No point in sending Pujara, Rahane along

The BCCI, in response to the concerns of the players of team India, had offered to let a few players arrive earlier than the others in South Africa. But the team found it pointless to only send a couple of players for practice and let others join them later. They wanted to travel together.

“What purpose does it solve to send Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane alone? A team stays together and that’s what the focus was. As for the practice game, well, they (Cricket South Africa) offered us two lame tracks for the warm-up game and it made more sense to do our own thing instead of playing an odd game for the sake of it,” says the Team India camp.

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