Rajkot or Hyderabad could host India's first day-night Test

The BCCI has asked the Committee of Administrators (CoA) to take the final call on India playing their inaugural day-night Test in the two-match series at home against West Indies next season. Rajkot and Hyderabad will host the two Tests, which will be played this October.

That is so far the only Test series India are scheduled to play during the 2018-19 home season before they depart for the four-Test series against Australia at the end of the year. Before that, India will play a one-off Test against Afghanistan from June 14-18 in Bengaluru.

India's international home season is scheduled to commence with the Asia Cup, which is likely to begin on September 18, subject to the Indian government giving permission to allow Pakistan to play.

Along with the two Tests, West Indies will also play five ODIs and three T20Is in October-November. The BCCI's tours, programmes and fixtures committee met on Saturday to finalise the venues for the next season and picked Mumbai, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Indore and Guwahati as the five cities for the ODI series. The three T20s will be held in Kolkata, Chennai and Kanpur/Lucknow.

With 2019 being a World Cup year, India are scheduled to play several limited-overs matches as part of their preparations. After their tour of Australia, India will travel to New Zealand to play five ODIs and three T20s (as per the ICC's Future Tours Programme).

On their return, India will wrap up the home season with another limited-overs series, against Australia, comprising five ODIs and two T20s. That series will be played in February-March before the IPL and will be India's last international series before the World Cup begins in England on May 30. Mohali, Delhi, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Ranchi will host the ODIs against Australia while Visakhapatnam and Bengaluru will host the two T20s.

At the meeting held in Mumbai on Saturday, the BCCI's tours, programmes and fixtures committee was told by the board secretary Amitabh Choudhary that Cricket West Indies (CWI) had agreed to the BCCI's proposal to play a day-night Test.

Recently, Choudhary was pulled up by the CoA chairman Vinod Rai for showing a "cavalier attitude" in taking policy decisions. Rai said the issue of day-night Tests would be placed on hold untill further deliberations took place.

Choudhary had tried to douse Rai's criticism by stating that he was merely trying to find "remedies" to arrest the "diminishing" interest in Test cricket. Also, since India are the only big Test-playing nation to have not played Test cricket under lights, Choudhary said he had consulted the likes of India coach Ravi Shastri, who was open to the idea of being tried on an "experimental" basis against West Indies.

In his suggestions to Choudhary, Shastri had pointed out that the Tests against "tier-II" countries like West Indies be held in tier-II cities (smaller centres) and the match start by noon.