Sri Lanka to fill West Indies void in India

Sri Lanka have agreed to fill the void that has been created by West Indies abandoning their current tour of India because of a payment structure dispute between the players and the WICB and WIPA. They will play a series of five ODIs in November.

"In principle we have agreed to accept India's invitation to play five one-day internationals," SLC secretary Nishantha Ranatunga said on Friday. "Initially India wanted us to play a T20 international as well but we decided that with the World Cup only a few months away, playing five ODIs would be beneficial to both teams."

Ranatunga said the five ODIs would be played between November 1 and 15 and that a final itinerary was awaited from the BCCI. He said the decision to accept India's invitation was taken after consultation with the Sri Lankan coaching staff and the national selectors.

This will be Sri Lanka's first tour to India in almost five years. The BCCI's working committee, in consultation with the tour, programme and fixtures committee, will decide the itinerary of the series in Hyderabad on October 21. It remains to be seen if all the five venues that were supposed to host the remaining games in the series against West Indies - Kolkata, Cuttack, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Ahmedabad - will be allotted a match each in the alternate series.

At the moment, only Kolkata is assured of a match. "It had been decided to award a match to CAB following their request to host an international match to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Eden Gardens, so Kolkata will stage a match," BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel said. He also confirmed that the annual Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi lecture, which was to be delivered by VVS Laxman in Kolkata on October 19, will be rescheduled and held ahead of the Kolkata ODI.

West Indies decided to pull out of their India tour after Friday's fourth ODI in Dharamsala. The dispute between the players and administration had emerged ahead of the first match of the series and no resolution was found despite several letters being sent back and forth between the captain Dwayne Bravo, the WICB and WIPA.