India skipper Virat Kohli will tour Down Under later this year even though his wife expecting their first child in January, Reuters reported on Friday (August 28).
Kohli on Thursday (August 27) announced the news of his wife Anushka Sharma’s pregnancy and baby arrival with an adorable social media post.
The news gave a bit of headache to Cricket Australia (CA) and its broadcasters as the availability of one of the biggest crowd-pullers of world cricket came under the cloud.
However, a key BCCI official confirmed to Reuters that Virat will travel to Australia.
"He's available for the tour, at least he has not said anything to the contrary," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.
"Now, if he has to come back in the middle of the tour, he has not said anything about that either. Of course there's plenty of time before the series."
According to the tentative schedule released by CA in May this year, India's tour of Australia will kick-start with a T20I affair on October 11 in Brisbane. The other two T20I games will be played on October 14 (Canberra) and October 17 (Adelaide).
The Border-Gavaskar Trophy will begin on December 3 at the Gabba. India are then scheduled to play a pink-ball Test from December 11 to 15 in Adelaide while the third and fourth Tests will be held in Melbourne (December 26-30) and Sydney (January 3-7) respectively.
The ODI series is slated to start on January 12 in Perth, followed by matches on January 15 (Melbourne) and January (Sydney) 17.
The series against India is reportedly worth 300 million Australian dollars ($220 million) to CA, which has already faced the postponement of T20 World Cup due to COVID-19 pandemic and will now host the tournament in 2022.
