BCCI Advocates for Extended Overseas Preparations in Upcoming FTP
The Board of Control for Cricket in India is preparing to push hard for a fundamental change to India’s international calendar: more rest, more preparation, and crucially, more time to adjust to overseas conditions, especially in the SENA countries.
The timing is tight. The next round of Future Tours Programme negotiations is almost upon them.
A two-day FTP workshop in Dubai on September 22 and 23 will bring together operations teams from all full-member boards to map out the 2027-31 international cycle. The BCCI will be at that table, armed with a clear brief. Representatives from the top eight Associate nations have also been invited, a nod to the broader direction the global game is trying to take.
After a review meeting of the Indian team on Thursday, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia laid out the board’s stance with unusual clarity.
“The challenge we are facing is that there are too many matches in the year, and that is why, in the next FTP, we will do certain things and take certain measures,” Saikia said. He added that India’s FTP negotiators had been told to ensure the calendar “is scheduled in such a way that there is proper rest for the players, as well as some kind of acclimatisation or friendly matches before any major series in SENA countries.”
That is the crux. India want breathing space – not only between series, but before the big away assignments where conditions can decide a contest before the toss.
Crowded calendar, bigger stakes
Turning that intent into reality will be complicated. The 2027-31 window is already heavy with commitments, even before bilateral series are locked in.
On the Test front, India are due to host England for five Tests at the start of 2028, then head to Australia at the end of that same year. Return tours are pencilled in: India to England, tentatively in 2029, and Australia to India in 2031.
Layered over that is a packed ICC schedule. The T20 World Cup goes to Australia and New Zealand in 2028. India host the Champions Trophy in 2029. The 2030 T20 World Cup is slated for England, Scotland and Ireland. The 2031 ODI World Cup will be co-hosted by India and Bangladesh.
The World Test Championship adds another band of fixtures: India are likely to travel to South Africa and West Indies and host Sri Lanka and one more side across that cycle. Each commitment eats into the margins the BCCI wants to create for rest and warm-up games.
It will demand some deft work from India’s FTP managers. The board, though, has rarely shied away from complex scheduling battles, especially when commercial and competitive priorities collide.
Multilateral cricket back in fashion
Away from the India-specific push, there is another theme taking shape ahead of the Dubai workshop: a renewed appetite for multilateral cricket.
Cricbuzz understands that the next international calendar could feature more multi-team events, as a growing number of boards question the financial and sporting pull of bilateral series. The sense among administrators is that tri-series and quadrangulars, once staples of the calendar, may again offer better value – particularly in white-ball cricket.
Right now, those formats are almost relics. A T20I tri-series is currently being played in Namibia, involving the hosts, South Africa and Zimbabwe. At ODI level, there has been just one tri-series since the 2019 World Cup – New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan – staged as a lead-in to the 2025 Champions Trophy.
India’s own recent history with such events is sparse. Since the 2011 World Cup, they have featured in only four multilateral tournaments of that type.
There was the 2011-12 tri-series in Australia, with Sri Lanka as the third side. Two years later came a tri-series in the West Indies, also involving Sri Lanka. In 2014-15, India returned to Australia for another tri-series, this time with England as the third team.
The most recent was the Nidahas Trophy in 2018 in Sri Lanka, a T20I event featuring Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It ended with one of the most dramatic finishes in India’s recent white-ball history, Dinesh Karthik sealing the title with a last-ball six in the final.
The first three tournaments were ODIs; Nidahas was T20I. All four showed how a third team can change the dynamic of a series, but they did not lead to a sustained revival of the format.
The Asia Cup stands apart as a regular multilateral event, yet it belongs to the Asian Cricket Council, not any individual board, and follows its own commercial logic.
India’s hosting dilemma
For the BCCI, multilateral cricket throws up a very specific problem.
Multilateral tournaments are typically owned and run by the host board. That structure works cleanly when all games carry similar value in the home market. In India, they do not. Matches not involving India simply do not command the same broadcast and sponsorship numbers.
That imbalance goes a long way towards explaining why India have not hosted a multilateral tournament of their own since the TVS Cup in 2003-04, which featured Australia and New Zealand. The economics of selling non-India games, and of carving out space in an already congested home season, have never quite added up.
If the next FTP is to feature more multilateral events with India as a central player, those financial and media-rights questions will need fresh answers. How do you price a package where half the content may not feature the team that drives the market? How do you share revenues among boards when the host’s market is so dominant?
Those are not abstract debates. They will sit alongside India’s push for rest, acclimatisation windows and SENA warm-ups when the boards gather in Dubai.
Between the race for revenue and the need to protect players, the shape of cricket’s next four-year cycle will reveal which priority truly rules the sport.
