BCCI's choice of venues for England series a reminder of why Test cricket needs to take place in select centres

The BCCI dropped a major announcement on Tuesday, unveiling the calendar for India’s 2023-24 home season with Australia and England set for lengthy tours of the cricket-mad nation.

Australia arrive in September and will play a three-ODI series right before the ICC World Cup and stay back for five T20Is that takes place in November. The focus of the home season, however, will be the five-Test series against England that begins in January and goes on till March, leading to the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Afghanistan arrive for a three T20Is between the two major tours, with the Men in Blue likely to test out their reserves during that series.

The talking point following the announcement however, was not regarding the choice of teams coming over for the Indian winter, but over the choice of venues, especially for the England Tests.

Given the history between the two teams that goes all the way back to 1932, India and England enjoy a storied rivalry in the ‘Gentleman’s Game’ that only became more competitive as the years passed by. And a Test series between these two heavyweights, regardless of the nation hosting it, is among the standout bilateral fixtures of the modern era.

The BCCI’s choice of venues for the series however, has left many a follower of the game scratching their head. The venues that have been finalised for the series are Hyderabad (25-29 January), Visakhapatnam (2-6 February), Rajkot (15-19 February), Ranchi (23-27 February) and Dharamsala (7-11 March).

Though each of the aforementioned venues have hosted Tests in the past, the BCCI decided against picking from India’s traditional Test centres — Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium and New Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium. Or even Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, the largest cricket stadium which has to have become the current BCCI’s leadership’s first-choice venue for all important fixtures, including the final of this year’s World Cup.

One could argue the fact that the BCCI was looking to award more games to venues that are not part of the World Cup extravaganza, to try and give fans in those cities a slice of cricketing action during this season. The World Cup will be hosted in 10 cities and Hyderabad is the only city from that list that gets to host games in the bilateral season, including the first England Test.

But in doing so, BCCI might just be undermining the Test format, especially taking the opposition into account. The ICC World Cup no doubt is cricket’s showpiece event even if the ODI format itself has come under the scanner since the advent of the T20 format. And it is understandable that the most premier of venues will have to be reserved for that tournament, with the most iconic grounds booked for marquee fixtures including the knockouts.

But a Test series between India and England isn’t just like any other bilateral series, especially in the aftermath of both the BCCI and the Indian cricket team’s rise since the turn of the millennium as well as England’s own massive improvement across formats in the previous decade. India, after all, plays some of its fiercest cricket with England and with meetings against Pakistan limited to ICC and ACC events since 2008, their bilateral rivalry is perhaps at level, or second only to Australia.

Thus, the absence of India’s premier Test venues in the England Tests does send out the wrong message on the part of the Indian board, even if not intentional. In each of England and Australia’s last two Test series’ in India, all of which have had a minimum of four Tests, the BCCI has included at least one match in a traditional Test venue.

The 2016-17 series against England — which also had Vizag and Rajkot as the venues — the last two Tests took place in Mumbai and Chennai. In the 2021 series that took place shortly before the devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, Chennai and Ahmedabad divided the four Tests between themselves, with the latter hosting a day-night fixture.

5 tests against England 2024:

Hyderabad
Vizag
Rajkot
Ranchi
Dharamshala

2016/17

Rajkot
Vizag
Mohali
Mumbai
Chennai

Vizag and Rajkot hold status quo. Should be a good series