The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is likely to delay the highly anticipated announcement of India’s 2025 Champions Trophy (CT) squad beyond the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) mandated deadline of Sunday (January 12).
According to a report by Cricbuzz, the Indian cricket governing body is likely to ask for more time from the ICC to submit their squad for the mega event. An announcement is now likely to happen by the end of next weekend (January 18 or 19).
The report states that the reason behind the delay is India’s recent commitment in Australia, where the team played a hectic five-match Test series as part of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT).
In normal circumstances, the deadline to submit the squad is a month before the tournament starts, but this time around, the ICC asked for the submissions five weeks earlier. All teams are allowed to make changes to their squad without any reason till February 12.
However, the same report states that the Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee will announce the squad for the five-match T20I series against England in the next couple of days. It is expected that a squad similar to the one that played a home series against Bangladesh in October will take the field in the shortest format of the game.
The T20I series will take place from January 22 to February 2. India and England will also play three ODIs from February 6 to 12, just days before the 2025 Champions Trophy begins on February 19.
