Cricket Tours — What a Tour Is, How It Works & The Schedule

A cricket tour occurs when a national team travels to another country to play a series of matches — Tests, ODIs, and/or T20Is — over a period of several weeks. The visiting team is called the 'touring side'. Tours are the backbone of international cricket scheduling and are governed by bilateral agreements between cricket boards, coordinated by the ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP).

What Is the Future Tours Programme (FTP)?

The Future Tours Programme is the ICC's schedule of planned international series across all its member nations. It covers a cycle of 4–8 years, detailing which teams tour where and when. The FTP ensures every Test-playing nation plays regularly against all others, both home and away. It also balances the broadcast calendar to maximise revenue for national boards.

Structure of a Typical Tour

• Warm-up matches: the touring side plays one or two games against provincial or domestic teams to acclimatise and find form
• Test series: the main event of most full tours — typically 2–5 Tests played over the series
• ODI series: usually 3 ODIs following or preceding the Tests
• T20I series: 3–5 T20Is, sometimes played as a standalone mini-tour
• Travel days and rest days between matches are factored into the schedule

Why Are Tours Important?

Touring tests a team in conditions they don't experience at home — different pitch types, weather, humidity, and crowd atmospheres. A series won away from home is universally respected as a greater achievement than one at home. The Ashes (England vs Australia) alternates home and away every two years, meaning winning a series in England or Australia carries enormous prestige. India's 2018–19 series win in Australia — their first ever — is considered one of their greatest achievements.

What Is a Tour Match?

Before the main series begins, touring sides often play 'tour matches' — warm-up games against domestic or provincial opposition. These are not full international fixtures (they don't count for Test or ODI records) but give the touring players a chance to get practice overs on local pitches, adjust to conditions, and let selectors see fringe players before the series. In the modern era, tour matches have been reduced — heavy ODI and T20 schedules leave little time for warm-ups.

India's tour of Australia in 2018–19 comprised 4 Tests, 3 ODIs, and 3 T20Is. India won the Test series 2–1 — their first ever Test series win on Australian soil. The achievement was celebrated widely as the pinnacle of Virat Kohli's captaincy. It also meant Australia, as the home side, had lost a series for the first time at home to an Asian team in a generation.