The Indian team is currently busy with the South Africa series which is scheduled to start on December 26. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) on the other hand, made a big announcement. The Afghanistan cricket team will play a short ODI series against India in March next year. Afghanistan will be involved in a three-match ODI series in India.
ACB announced this information on its Twitter handle. ACB has shared Afghanistan's schedule for the next two years as well.
Only three Tests in two years
Afghanistan's future tour schedule (FTP) of the 2022-23 cycle reveals that their team will play 37 ODIs, 12 T20 Internationals and three Test matches. Then the team will go to the home ground against the Netherlands before the series against India, followed by the tour of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
After finishing the Bangladesh tour, Afghanistan will come straight to India. During these two years, Afghanistan's team will play one Test series against Ireland and a two-Test match series against Zimbabwe.
The last T20 International match between India and Afghanistan was played in the recently-concluded ICC T20 World Cup. Both the teams are set to face each other for the first time since the T20 World Cup encounter, in March next year.
Taliban government’s involvement
Earlier, the Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan and now they are in power as well. The Taliban government did not allow the Afghanistan women's team to play cricket. In such a situation like this, the International Cricket Council (ICC) can snatch full cricketing nation status from Afghanistan. On the other hand, Afghanistan did not even play a single bilateral series since the Taliban came to power.
Busy next year for India
Team India, under Test captain Virat Kohli is busy in preparing for the South Africa tour and after that Team India, led by Rohit Sharma, will take on South Africa in a three-match ODI series. After this tour, India will play multiple small series on their home soil, including the series against West Indies.
After the end of these series, the season of IPL 2022 is also slated to start. This clearly shows that the coming year is also going to be a pretty busy one for the Men in Blue.
