The BCCI announced the elaborate home schedule for 2023-24 on Monday, July 25 featuring 16 matches in total, including eight T20Is, three ODIs and five Test matches against Australia, Afghanistan and England. The matches have been spread across venues that either missed out on hosting the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 or didn't get enough matches. Hence, the likes of Nagpur, Indore, Mohali, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Rajkot and Trivandrum will be hosting at least one game in the long home season.
The biggest surprise was the venues for the Test matches. While Hyderabad and Dharamsala have expectedly gotten one match each, the remaining three Tests are at Vizag, Rajkot and Ranchi. Ranchi is one of the venues, which raised the question of whether India should adopt Test centres like England and Australia, back in 2019 which concerned the then-captain Virat Kohli as well. The audience at JSCA Stadium was far from desirable during the India-South Africa series and Kohli stated that India should have five Test centres and the venue rotation should be limited to white-ball cricket.
The statement has resurfaced on social media after all the major centres including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata missed out on hosting any of the Tests in the England series from January to March in 2024.
"We've been discussing this for a long time now, and in my opinion, we should have five Test centres, period. I mean, I agree [with] state associations and rotation and giving games and all that, that is fine for T20 and one-day cricket, but Test cricket, teams coming to India should know, 'we're going to play at these five centres, these are the pitches we're going to expect, these are the kind of people that will come to watch, crowds'.
"So that becomes a challenge already, when you're leaving your shores, because we go to any place, we know we're having four Test matches in these venues, this is what the pitch is going to offer, it's going to be a full stadium, the crowd's behind the [home] team, and look, you want to keep Test cricket alive and exciting. I totally agree with the fact that we need five Test centres at the max," he had said then.
The five Test matches between India and England will be as follows: Hyderabad (1st Test - January 25-29), Vizag (2nd Test - February 2-6), Rajkot (3rd Test - February 15-19), Ranchi (4th Test - February 23-27) and Dharamsala (5th Test - March 7-11).