No Rohit Sharma, No Virat Kohli for limited overs tour in Sri Lanka

Mumbai: BCCI president Sourav Ganguly on Sunday said that the Indian team will tour Sri Lanka in July for a limited overs bilateral series without the Big names. Skipper Virat Kohli and Vice-Captain Rohit Sharma will not be part of the tour as they will be engaged in a marquee five-match Test series in England.

"We have planned a white ball series for the senior men's team during the month of July where they will play T20 Internationals and ODIs in Sri Lanka," Ganguly said in an interaction.

"Yes, it will be a team of white ball specialists. It will be a different team," the former India captain said, making it clear that the cricket board also has the preparation of white ball regulars in mind.

There will be at least 5 T20 Internationals and may be three ODIs in Sri Lanka. "The BCCI president is very keen that all our top players are match ready and since England doesn't have a white ball leg the month of July can be utilized well," a BCCI source said while explaining the logic behind the tour.

India's tour of England will end on September 14 and with the schedule of the remainder of IPL yet to be chalked out, the BCCI would want the likes of Shikhar Dhawan, Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Yuzvendra Chahal to be match ready.

This will give the team a chance to try out new IPL finds, like whether it will be Chahal, Rahul Chahar or Rahul Tewatia, if Chetan Sakariya can be tried as left-arm option, whether Devdutt Padikkal or Shreyas Iyer gets fit to play by then.

Not to forget that Prithvi Shaw's international career could get a boost with this white ball tournament, with Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan already had their debuts recently.

Probable squad for the Limited overs Sri Lanka tour:

Shikhar Dhawan(C), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Sanju Samson(wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan(wk), Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Krunal Pandya, Rahul Tewatia, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Deepak Chahar, T Natarajan, Rahul Chahar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Jaydev Unadkat, Riyan Parag, Kuldeep Yadav, Kartik Tyagi.