The BCCI announced a 20 member squad that will travel to England to play New Zealand in the World Test Championship (WTC) in June and then stay on in England for a month in preparation for a long series against England in July and August.
The Indian team would have flown back to India in normal circumstances after the inaugural WTC match but because of the quarantine situation due to COVID, India will continue to remain in the UK.
The BCCI had to suspend the 2021 IPL in early May after the IPL bubble was breached and multiple players and staff tested positive. The IPL is the biggest cash cow for the BCCI and as of now there is no indication as to when the BCCI will be able to reschedule the IPL in 2021.
The BCCI needs to bring in more revenues in 2021 after most of the 2020 cricketing calendar was cancelled due to COVID. BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has announced that India will tour Sri Lanka in July to take part in 3 ODI games and 5 T20 games. No official dates have been confirmed as of now but Ganguly did confirm that the Indian team will have to go through a 14 day quarantine period in Sri Lanka.
With the Indian team based in England from June to September 2021, it is obvious that the BCCI will have to come up with an India A team to tour Sri Lanka. This team will technically not be referred to as the India A team but given the fact that they will be without captain Virat Kohli, vice-captain Rohit Sharma and regular T20 stars which include Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul, it is undoubtedly an India A squad.
The BCCI will put together a mix of experienced and new faces for the Sri Lanka tour. The BCCI could get either S Dhawan or B Kumar to captain the squad if they are fit and ready to tour. There is no shortage of talent for the BCCI to choose from as a number of players put their hands up during the initial part of IPL 2021.
Our playing XI for the Sri Lanka series is as follows. Prithvi Shaw, Shikhar Dhawan (captain), Devdutt Padikkal, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya, Krunal Pandya, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Prasidh Krishna.
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