India's 2023-24 home season: Venues revealed for exciting series against Australia, Afghanistan & England

India's 2023-24 home season is set to be hosted by Mohali, Indore, Rajkot, and Visakhapatnam, with each venue hosting two games. The season will feature series against Australia (three ODIs and five T20Is), Afghanistan (three T20Is), and England (five Tests). The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) may have allocated additional games to these venues as they missed out on hosting matches during the ICC ODI World Cup 2023 in October-November.

Other venues that were not selected to host the World Cup games, such as Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati, Nagpur, and Ranchi, will also get the opportunity to host matches during the 2023-24 bilateral season. Among the cities chosen to host World Cup games, only Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Dharamsala have been awarded bilateral games during India's home season.

The bilateral calendar for England's tour of India seems to favor non-traditional venues, as none of the five Tests will be played at India's major cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bengaluru. Instead, England will play their Test matches in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Ranchi, and Dharamsala. These five grounds have hosted only five Tests or fewer in the past.

India's home season will commence with an ODI series against Australia, scheduled from September 22 to 27, just before the World Cup. The T20I series will begin on November 23, four days after the World Cup final, and will continue until December 3. Following this, India will tour South Africa for three T20Is (December 10 to 14), three ODIs (December 17 to 21), and two Tests (December 26-30 and January 3-7).

There will be a three-day break before the home T20I series against Afghanistan, scheduled from January 11 to 17. This will mark Afghanistan's first-ever white-ball bilateral series against India. While they previously played a Test match against India in India in June 2018, India had acted as their 'home' venue during bilateral series against Ireland, Bangladesh, and West Indies.

During the Afghanistan T20Is, it is expected that several of India's Test players will be given a break to recuperate before the start of the Test series against England. The Test series is set to begin on January 25 and will run until March 11, with eight-day gaps between the second and third Tests and the fourth and fifth Tests.