India to play extra games in SL to ease virus losses

India have agreed to play more games on a tour of Sri Lanka in July to help overcome the national board’s financial losses from the coronavirus, a top official said Thursday.

Sri Lanka will also ask other visiting teams to play extra games to boost television revenues, said Shammi Silva, who was re-elected as Sri Lanka Cricket president on Thursday. India were to play three Twenty20 internationals in Sri Lanka but have added three one-day internationals. ‘India agreed to double the number of matches in their upcoming tour and this means we will get more revenue from television rights,’ Silva told reporters. He did not say how much the board had lost from tours cancelled last year but said similar requests to play more matches will be made to other teams. Sri Lanka are scheduled to host South Africa in August, Scotland in September and Afghanistan in November.

England pulled out of a series in March last year but returned to the island in December to play two Tests without spectators at Galle. Sri Lanka are currently in Bangladesh to play three one-day internationals. The country has been battered by a new wave of the pandemic that has hit South Asia. It has banned airline passengers from entering until the end of May in a bid to contain a surge in infections.

BCCI asks ECB to rejig Test series schedule for IPL window

The BCCI has put in a late request to the ECB to bring forward the start and the end of the five-Test series by a week, in a bid to complete the pandemic-interrupted 2021 IPL season. The request was put in this week and the ECB is yet to respond.

As things stand, the first Test is scheduled to begin on August 4 and the series to end on September 14. The move is aimed at having a longer window in September to finish the remainder of the IPL season, which was suspended midway due to a growing number of Covid-19 cases among players and staff.

The series opener in Trent Bridge from August 4-8 will, according to the current schedule, be followed by Tests at Lord's (August 12-16), Headingley (August 25-29), The Oval (September 2-6) and Old Trafford (September 10-14).

If the final Test ends around September 7, it would give the BCCI a three-week window - which is how much time the board feels it needs - to complete the remaining 31 games. That would then allow time for international teams to converge for the T20 World Cup, which is to run from the middle of October and until November 14.