Why is India playing Bangladesh in the middle of the monsoon

The Board of Control for Cricket probably underestimated the amount of cricket that India promised to play against other nations — only that could explain a tour to Bangladesh in the middle of monsoon. India’s schedule, if you include ICC’s World Cup and the BCCI’s Indian Premier League (IPL) is so tight that there was basically no room to tour the neighbouring country but in June — a month in which Bangladesh have never hosted a Test before. [caption id=“attachment_2293414” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] India and Bangladesh suffered a rain curtailed tour even in June 2014 too. AFP[/caption] The result is that the current Test has seen only 103.3 overs being bowled in three days instead of the stipulated 270 overs. Weather forecasts say there will be rain for the rest of the match in Fatullah too — and over the course of the three ODIs scheduled after the Test. An ESPNCricinfo report says that the negotiations for this tour were carried out in February when the Big Three - India, England and Australia - were in the process of taking over the ICC. The Bangladesh Cricket Board was one of the last boards to agree with this new distribution of power and therefore had few choices when it came to scheduling this tour. The result of the FTP being scrapped for a new system of scheduling — in which two boards would need to agree on a slot to play through the members’ participation agreement (MPA) — was that the tour was reduced from two Tests and three ODIs to just one Test and three ODIs. This is not something new though — India and Bangladesh suffered a rain curtailed tour even in June 2014 too, when the third ODI was abandoned in the 35th over and the first two were also affected. The report also says that Bangladesh and India signed the MPA in February 2014 for four tours from 2014 to 2020. Click here to read the full report.