The Board of Control for Cricket in India wants a very different kind of calendar for the next Future Tours Programme. Less clutter, more rest, and crucially, proper time to toughen up in overseas conditions – especially in the SENA countries.
And it has to move quickly.
A key workshop on the 2027–31 FTP is set for Dubai on September 22 and 23, where operations teams from all full-member boards will sit around the same table. The BCCI will be there, armed with a brief that reflects the growing strain on India’s players and the sharp spotlight on performances abroad.
Top eight Associate nations have also been invited, underlining that this isn’t just a big boys’ scheduling exercise. It’s a reset moment for the global game.
BCCI pushes for rest and acclimatisation
BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, speaking after a review meeting of the Indian team on Thursday, laid out the central concern in blunt terms: the calendar is overflowing.
“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,” Saikia said.
The directive to the board’s FTP managers is clear. India’s schedule must build in two non-negotiables: rest blocks for players and proper acclimatisation or warm-up games before major series in SENA countries – South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia.
That means not just flying in, playing a token tour match and diving into a marquee Test. It means carving out real time in a calendar already jammed with bilateral series, ICC events and World Test Championship obligations.
A packed 2027–31 landscape
The next FTP window is already crowded before India’s planners even pick up a pen.
India are due to host England for a five-Test series at the start of 2028, then head to Australia at the back end of that year. The cycle then flips: a tentative tour of England in 2029 and a home series against Australia in 2031.
Threaded through those headline series are heavyweight ICC tournaments. The T20 World Cup lands in Australia and New Zealand in 2028. The Champions Trophy comes to India in 2029. Another T20 World Cup follows in 2030, split between England, Scotland and Ireland. The ODI World Cup then returns to the subcontinent in 2031, jointly hosted by India and Bangladesh.
On top of that sit World Test Championship commitments, which could see India travelling to South Africa and West Indies and hosting Sri Lanka and at least one more side. Every window is contested. Every free week feels like a luxury.
Finding room for rest periods and acclimatisation tours in that maze will test even the BCCI’s famed scheduling muscle. But the board has built a reputation on getting its way in the corridors of power. It will expect to do so again.
Multilateral cricket back on the table
While India wrestles with its own calendar, a broader conversation is gathering pace. Cricbuzz understands that the next international cycle could feature more multilateral cricket, as boards reassess the value of bilateral series.
The mood among several administrators is shifting. Bilateral cricket, especially outside the top-tier rivalries, is seen as losing its pull and struggling to justify itself financially. Multilateral tournaments, by contrast, are viewed as more marketable and more lucrative.
Yet tri-series and quadrangulars have almost disappeared from the modern game. A rare T20I tri-series is currently being played in Namibia, involving the hosts, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Since the 2019 World Cup, there has been just one ODI tri-series – New Zealand, South Africa and Pakistan – staged as a lead-in to the 2025 Champions Trophy.
India’s involvement in such events has been sporadic in the last decade and a half. Since the 2011 World Cup, India have featured in only four multilateral tournaments of that kind. There was the 2011-12 tri-series in Australia with Sri Lanka, the 2013 event in the West Indies with Sri Lanka and the hosts, and another tri-series in Australia in 2014-15, this time alongside England.
The most recent was the Nidahas Trophy in 2018, a T20I tri-series in Sri Lanka involving Bangladesh and the hosts. That tournament is remembered for one moment: Dinesh Karthik launching a last-ball six to win the final for India and etch his name into white-ball folklore.
The first three of those tournaments were ODI events; Nidahas broke the pattern in T20I format. The Asia Cup also sits in the multilateral space, but that belongs to the Asian Cricket Council, a different commercial and governance model altogether.
India’s multilateral dilemma
On paper, more multilateral cricket sounds like a simple solution: bigger events, more teams, more eyeballs. For India, it is more complicated.
Multilateral tournaments usually belong to the host board. In India’s case, the matches that do not feature the home side are unlikely to command the same broadcast and sponsorship premiums as India games. That imbalance has always hung over any talk of regular tri-series on Indian soil.
It also helps explain why India have not hosted a multilateral tournament since the TVS Cup in 2003-04, which brought Australia and New Zealand to the country. The economics never quite stacked up strongly enough to tempt the BCCI back into that space.
As the game’s powerbrokers gather in Dubai to redraw the map for 2027–31, the questions are stark. Can boards reshape the schedule to protect players and sharpen performance, while still squeezing out maximum value? And can India find a model that delivers both the acclimatisation it craves in SENA conditions and the financial returns it has come to expect from every ball it hosts?
