India's Tour To South Africa Likely To Be Taken Up For Discussion In BCCI's AGM

eam India is currently slated to leave for Johannesburg on December 9 but it is not yet clear whether the tour is on, shelved or curtailed.

New Delhi: A decision over the fate of team India's upcoming tour of South Africa will be taken during the 90th Annual General Meeting here on Saturday amid the spread of the new variant of Coronavirus, Omicron.

Omicron is believed to spread faster than the Delta variant. Countries all over the world are taking all the possible preventive measures to curb the spread of Covid-19's new variant. Team India is currently slated to leave for Johannesburg on December 9 but it is not yet clear whether the tour is on, shelved or curtailed. India has to play three Tests, three ODIs and four T20Is vs South Africa during the seven-week tour.

There have been multiple hospitalisations in the Gauteng province, where Johannesburg, the venue of the first Test beginning December 17, is located.

Centurion and Cape Town, respectively, are the venues for the next two Tests followed by a three-match ODI series and four T20Is.

Reportedly, India's tour of South Africa is not on the official agenda of the meeting but it may come up for discussion. On the England tour in September, the Indian team was ahead 2-1 in the Test series but did not play the last Test after emergence of Covd-19 cases in the team bubble, and will now take place in July 2022.

At present, India A team is in South Africa and has not been called back home. Standing on the threshold of playing his hundredth Test, Indian captain Virat Kohli has sought further clarity on the tour.

"...you want to have clarity and you want to be in a situation where you know exactly what is going on. We have to be realistic as well. We cannot just ignore the things that potentially could put you in a confusing place. And no one wants to be there," he had said.

"We have been talking to the Board, and we are pretty confident that within a day or two or pretty soon we will have absolute clarity as to what is going on," Kohli said.

The dates for the mega auction of IPL can also be announced in BCCI's AGM. Apart from this, India's poor performance in the T20 World Cup will also be discussed during the meeting.