Team India To Play Intra-Squad Matches In Sri Lanka After Request For Warm-Up Games With Host Denied Due To Covid-19 Protocols

The Sri Lanka-bound Team India will play a few intra-squad matches – games with Indian players themselves – instead of the Sri Lanka A team. The SLC has denied BCCI’s request for practice matches with the host’s team because of the difficulties faced owing to the covid-19.

A second-string India squad, which will be led by Shikhar Dhawan and with Bhuvneshwar Kumar as the vice-captain will travel to Sri Lanka for six white-ball matches – three ODI followed by as many T20Is – in July in Colombo.

A source in the know of developments revealed that the Indian players will play 3 warm-up matches – one of T20 format and two 50-over games – within themselves to prepare for the series.

“The Indians wanted to play some warm-up games against the A team or a team that could be arranged, but the COVID-19 protocols made that a little difficult and that is when a request went to BCCI to play intra-squad games.

“So, the Indian team will now play one T20 game and two one-day games to prepare for the limited-overs series,” news agency ANI quoted sources as saying.

Hotel quarantine for players commenced in Mumbai before flying to Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, the contingent for the Sri Lanka tour has assembled in Mumbai and will now undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine – the first 7 days will be strict individual isolation, following which they will be allowed to train in small groups.

As per the reports, the same Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) will be followed by the Sri Lanka-bound squad as that of the Test squad currently in England for the Test assignments.

“All the rules will be same like we followed in England. The outstation players came by charter flight and some flew business class of commercial airline,” a BCCI source told PTI.

“They will do seven days of room quarantine and then can meet in common areas inside the bio-bubble. The players will do gym sessions in staggered manner,” the source added.

India squad for Sri Lanka tour: Shikhar Dhawan (capt), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (vice-capt), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Rana, Ishan Kishan (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Chetan Sakariya

Net bowlers: Ishan Porel, Sandeep Warrier, Arshdeep Singh, R Sai Kishore, Simarjeet Singh

#TeamIndia’s limited-overs squad for the Sri Lanka series has assembled in Mumbai ?

Good to see some new and happy faces in the squad ??#SLvIND pic.twitter.com/30nA6lM3PT

— BCCI (@BCCI) June 15, 2021

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