The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the fixtures and venues for India's five-match T20I series against South Africa in an official statement on their website on Saturday. This will be the national team's first assignment after the culmination of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 season.
The IPL final is set to take place on May 29 in Ahmedabad, while the T20I series has been scheduled for June 9. The first T20I of the five-match series will be played at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi.
Cuttack, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, and Bengaluru will host the remainder of the series.
Here is the complete list of dates and venues for the T20I series against South Africa:
Sr no. | Day | Date | Match | Venue |
1 | Thursday | 9th June | 1st T20I | Delhi |
2 | Sunday | 12th June | 2nd T20I | Cuttack |
3 | Tuesday | 14th June | 3rd T20I | Vizag |
4 | Friday | 17th June | 4th T20I | Rajkot |
5 | Sunday | 19th June | 5th T20I | Bengaluru |
The Indian selector might choose to offer some of the big names, including the out-of-form Rohit Sharma as well as Virat Kohli, a much-needed rest during the series, but with the ICC T20 World Cup taking place in Australia later in the year, the inaugural T20 champions will be expected to play with a full-strength squad.
The side will be boosted by the return of Gujarat Titans (GT) skipper Hardik Pandya, and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) bowlers T Natarajan and Washington Sundar, who might make a return to the squad after suffering from injury concerns in the past year.
Under Rohit, India have been phenomenal in the shortest format of the game since the T20 World Cup, where a slew of disappointing performances meant that the side were knocked out in the Super 12 stages. This was followed by the resignation of Virat Kohli from his captaincy position.
After Rohit took over the captaincy in February 202, India have won their last 6-0 record in T20Is under the leadership of the current Mumbai Indians (MI) skipper, having completed clean sweeps against West Indies and then Sri Lanka at home.