Team India registered its first win by defeating Afghanistan in the Super-8 round of T20 World Cup 2024. Team India is certain to reach the semi-finals and the kind of game Rohit Sharma's team has shown so far, it seems that the team will not only reach the final but will also return with the title this time.

Now whether this will happen or not will be clear in a few days, but the thing that is absolutely clear at the moment is Team India's busy schedule after the World Cup, which was recently announced by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. This made the fans happy but a big question also arose. This question is about the preparation for the Champions Trophy.

On Thursday, June 20, before the Super-8 match against Afghanistan, the BCCI released the schedule of Team India's upcoming home season. Home season means international series held at home. It will start with the India-Bangladesh Test series in September, which will end with the ODI series against England in February.

Immediately after this ODI series, Team India will participate in the Champions Trophy 2025, which is to be hosted by Pakistan.

Only 3 ODIs before Champions Trophy

Now whether Team India will go to Pakistan for this tournament or not is a different question. At present, the question is being raised about the preparation of Team India before the Champions Trophy because before such a big tournament of 50-50 overs, Team India will play only 3 ODIs. Yes, to prepare for the Champions Trophy, Team India will play only 3 ODIs against England (total 6 ODIs if there is a Sri Lanka series).

These matches will be played only in February 2025. The surprising thing is that there is no major T20 tournament after the T20 World Cup but the Indian team's schedule is full of Tests and T20s.

There is a plethora of T20 matches, how will you prepare?

Tests have to be played because they are a part of the World Test Championship but why T20 series are being played is beyond understanding. Immediately after the World Cup, Team India has to play 5 T20 matches on the Zimbabwe tour, after which there is a possible tour of Sri Lanka.

There is a possibility of playing 3 T20 matches in this too. Along with T20, 3 ODIs can also be played on this tour but senior players like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Jaspreet Bumrah will be given rest in this series.

After this, 3 T20 matches are to be played against Bangladesh after 2 Test matches, after which there will be a tour of South Africa, which will have 4 T20s. Then in January, a series of 5 T20 matches will be played against England, after which there will be 3 ODIs. That is, between July 2024 and February 2025, Team India will play a total of 21 T20 matches, while it will play only 6 ODIs.

Now one argument for this is that all these are already part of the FTP i.e. Future Tour Program, but shouldn't the BCCI have discussed with other boards and reduced some T20s and replaced them with ODI matches?