CA to honour Australia's ODI tour to India as per schedule in January 2020

Melbourne: Cricket Australia on Thursday agreed to play an away ODI series against India early next year, days after trying to backtrack from the commitment by stopping their top women players from competing in an ongoing Women’s T20 challenge in Jaipur. Cricket Australia in fact used their three women players, Ellyse Perry, Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy as a bait to “blackmail the BCCI” as senior officials pointed out at top CA official Belinda Clark’s email. [caption id=“attachment_6258431” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Australians celebrate the fall of a wicket. AP[/caption] The two boards seem to have resolved the differences with the CA releasing its entire summer schedule on Thursday. “Cricket Australia will honour its commitment to tour India for three ODIs in mid-January, which had caused a reshuffle of the home international schedule and pushed back the Chappell-Hadlee series,” Cricket Australia confirmed the development on their official website while releasing their 2019-2020 itinerary. It was long decided that Australia will be coming to India for 10-day tour next January as part of the FTP agreement between the two boards but Cricket Australia were trying to backtrack after pressure from their home broadcaster, who were peeved that the home series against New Zealand during peak Australian summer was affected. As a result, New Zealand will play the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy (three-Test series) in December but the ODI series has been pushed to March as Australia will be travelling to India for the ODI series. “CA took the position that while January was our preference for these ODI matches, there are times we need to honour our commitments to work in the greater context of international cricket scheduling,” CA’s Head of Cricket Operations Peter Roach told the CA’s official website. It is understood that CA CEO Kevin Roberts and his Indian counterpart Rahul Johri have had discussions earlier this month and the BCCI is learnt to have told the former in no uncertain terms that they can’t go back on commitment.