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BCCI Advocates for Longer Acclimatisation Periods in SENA Tours
The Board of Control for Cricket in India wants something modern schedules almost never allow: time. Time to rest, time to adjust, time to actually prepare for the hardest assignments in the game.
With the next Future Tours Programme (FTP) cycle on the table, the BCCI has made it clear it will push for longer acclimatisation windows for overseas tours, especially in the SENA countries – South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia.
It has only a few weeks to press that case.
Dubai workshop, crowded decade
On September 22 and 23, operations teams from around the cricketing world will gather in Dubai for an FTP workshop that will shape the international calendar from 2027 to 2031. The BCCI will send its own delegation, tasked with squeezing rest and preparation time into an already bloated schedule.
This is not just a Full Members’ club either. Representatives from the top eight Associate nations have been invited, a sign that the next FTP will be more inclusive, but also more complex.
“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,” BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said on Thursday after a review meeting of the Indian team.
He laid out the brief for India’s planners in simple terms: “Our FTP should be 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 ideal. The reality is a calendar already groaning under commitments.
India’s long road from 2027 to 2031
The next cycle is stacked even before boards sit down in Dubai.
India will host England for five Tests at the start of 2028, then head to Australia at the back end of the same year. The traffic does not stop there. A return visit to England is pencilled in for 2029, while Australia are expected to tour India in 2031.
Threaded through those marquee series are ICC tournaments that leave little room for manoeuvre. The 2028 T20 World Cup goes to Australia and New Zealand. The Champions Trophy lands in India in 2029. Another T20 World Cup follows in 2030, shared by England, Scotland and Ireland. Then comes the 2031 ODI World Cup, co-hosted by India and Bangladesh.
On top of that, there are World Test Championship obligations. India may need to tour South Africa and West Indies, and host Sri Lanka and at least one more side, within that same window.
To carve out warm-up matches and rest periods from such a landscape will demand ruthless planning and some tough conversations. Yet the BCCI has rarely shied away from targets once it sets them.
Bilateral fatigue, multilateral temptation
While India pushes for breathing space around its biggest tours, another debate is quietly reshaping the FTP: the future of bilateral cricket itself.
Cricbuzz understands that the next international calendar could feature a noticeable rise in multilateral events. There is a growing feeling among several boards that straight bilateral series are losing their pull, both in terms of fan interest and financial muscle. Multilateral tournaments, by contrast, are seen as better vehicles for broadcast revenue and commercial deals.
Tri-series and quadrangulars once dotted the calendar. Now they are almost museum pieces.
At present, only a T20I tri-series in Namibia – featuring the hosts, South Africa and Zimbabwe – breaks the monotony. Since the 2019 World Cup, there has been just one ODI tri-series, involving New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan, staged as a lead‑in to the 2025 Champions Trophy.
India’s involvement in such events has been sparse in the modern era. Since the 2011 World Cup, it has featured in only four multilateral tournaments of this kind. 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 Caribbean involving Sri Lanka and hosts West Indies. Another tri-series followed in Australia in 2014-15, this time with England as the third team.
The last such event remains vivid in Indian memory: the Nidahas Trophy in 2018, a T20I tri-series with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, settled by Dinesh Karthik’s last-ball six in a dramatic final in Colombo. The first three tournaments were ODIs; Nidahas broke that pattern in the T20I format.
The Asia Cup also brings multiple teams together, but it sits in a different category, owned and run by the Asian Cricket Council rather than any single board.
India and the multilateral puzzle
For most hosts, multilateral tournaments are their own property. They control the event, they control the inventory, they chase the upside. In India, that equation changes.
Non-India matches in a home tournament simply do not command the same broadcast and sponsorship valuation as games featuring the national side. That imbalance cuts into the potential upside and helps explain why the BCCI has stayed away from hosting such events for two decades.
The last time India staged a multilateral tournament under its own banner was the TVS Cup in 2003-04, with Australia and New Zealand completing the line-up. Since then, the board has preferred the clarity and guaranteed value of bilateral series and ICC events.
If multilateral cricket is to make a genuine comeback in the next FTP, the economics will need to be rewritten. Media-rights models, revenue-sharing mechanisms, and the packaging of non-India fixtures will all come under the microscope.
The BCCI walks into Dubai with two intertwined battles: protect its players with rest and acclimatisation, and weigh up the lure of multilateral riches against the cold numbers of its home market. How much can it bend a global calendar already bursting at the seams?
