The T20I series between India and Afghanistan is starting from 13 September. A unique sight will be seen in this three-match series. Team India has been given a visitors’ dressing room for all the three matches to be held at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. This means that India will not use the dressing room of the home team during the series to be held in its own country.
The reason for this is not the ground, but the official host of the series. Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) is hosting this series. Therefore, administratively, Afghanistan is the home team and India is considered the visiting team. Dressing rooms have also been arranged under this arrangement.
This will happen for the first time in Indian cricket history
The home team dressing room of Arun Jaitley Stadium is named after former Indian cricketer Raman Lamba. The Afghanistan team will use this dressing room in all three matches. The Indian team will get a place in the visitors dressing room named after Prakash Bhandari. This arrangement will not change during the series. This will be the first time in cricket history that the Indian team will use the dressing room of the visiting team at its own home.
Afghanistan often organizes its domestic international matches in other countries. Due to challenges related to the infrastructure and security arrangements required for international cricket in the country, the Afghanistan Cricket Board has to resort to foreign or neutral venues.
For this reason, Afghanistan has already organized its home matches on Indian grounds like Noida, Dehradun and Lucknow. But for the first time in any bilateral series against India on Indian soil, Afghanistan Cricket Board has got the status of official host.
Usually, the team of the country where the series is played gets the home dressing room. But in this series, the arrangement has been reversed due to Afghanistan being the administrative host. This does not mean that the domestic conditions will change for India, but this change will definitely be visible inside the stadium.
Indian team: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Sanju Samson (wicketkeeper), Ishan Kishan (wicketkeeper), Tilak Verma (vice-captain), Shivam Dubey, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Varun Chakraborty, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Yash Thakur.