Why the Bangladesh tour was scheduled for wet June

A Test match in Bangladesh in June, coinciding with the onset of the rainy monsoon season, might seem like hurried and last-minute planning to fit in any kind of cricket. However, it was a series agreed upon last year, and the timing is a consequence of India's packed schedule and Bangladesh's place fairly low down in the rankings pecking order.

It is common knowledge that cricket in the monsoons will be hostage to the weather - Bangladesh's cricket season, like India's, is traditionally from October to May. So tight is India's schedule, though, that even a change by a couple of weeks was not possible.

The upshot is that the current Test - the first Test played in Bangladesh in June - has seen one day washed out completely, with 56 overs possible on the first day and the third day also losing out at the time of writing. There is rain forecast for the rest of the match in Fatullah, and for the three ODIs - though each has a reserve day to accommodate any delay.

India's last tour of Bangladesh - in June 2014 - was also affected by rain. The third ODI was abandoned in the 35th over and the first two were also interrupted due to rain.

Both tours were part of the original 2011-20 Future Tours Programme, according to which the 2015 tour was to have two Tests and three ODIs. But the FTP's nature completely changed last year when the Big Three announced their plans to restructure world cricket.

Since then, a bilateral tour, to be confirmed, required the two boards to enter a members' participation agreement (MPA). Bangladesh and India duly signed the MPA last February for four tours, from 2014 to 2020, and the agreement was announced by the BCB president Nazmul Hasan after he returned from an ICC meeting. The tours were ratified in April 2014 on the sidelines of the ICC executive board meeting.

The February negotiations were held at a time when the Big Three's position paper was out in the public domain but not yet formalised - it needed votes from the rest of the full members to have it sanctioned. The BCB was initially silent on the revamp consequences and later said that they would decide on the draft based on the "response of other boards". The negotiations that ensued in the ICC headquarters, between the Big Three and the other boards, included working out tour details.

Many of the boards got their wishes of India tours granted during these parleys but since the BCB was one of the last boards to agree with the Big Three's proposals, they had very little choice but to stick to the previous FTP's scheduling that had India touring in June 2014 and 2015. The BCB declined to comment on the matter.