India national cricket team vs Sri Lanka national cricket team standings

India national cricket team vs Sri Lanka national cricket team standings: Everything You Need to Know

Tour at a Glance

• Test series (2 matches): India tour of Sri Lanka, August 2026, part of the ICC World Test Championship 2025–27 cycle
• ODI series (3 matches): Sri Lanka tour of India, December 2026
• T20I series (3 matches): Sri Lanka tour of India, December 2026

The two legs are being played on separate continents and with a four-month gap between them, meaning both boards effectively split the tour into a red-ball assignment for India in Sri Lanka and a white-ball assignment for Sri Lanka in India later in the year.

Test Series: India Tour of Sri Lanka

India’s trip to Sri Lanka marks the team’s first bilateral Test tour of the island nation in nine years, and it carries significant weight given both sides are jostling for position in the 2025–27 World Test Championship table. Every point earned in Galle and Colombo could matter when the race for a place in the WTC final tightens up later in the cycle.

Schedule

Ahead of the series, India played a four-day warm-up fixture against a Sri Lanka Cricket XI in Colombo from August 7–10, which the tourists won by six wickets — a useful confidence boost and a chance to acclimatise to subcontinent conditions before the series proper began.

Squads

India will be led by Shubman Gill, with KL Rahul as his deputy. The touring party features Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rishabh Pant, Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja (back after recovering from a tennis elbow issue), Kuldeep Yadav, Manav Suthar, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Devdutt Padikkal and uncapped all-rounder Saransh Jain, who has earned a maiden call-up. Sai Sudharsan and Jasprit Bumrah were named subject to fitness clearance, with Bumrah subsequently ruled out through injury and replaced by Auqib Nabi, while Washington Sundar also missed out after failing to recover in time from a hamstring problem.

Sri Lanka have gone with a 16-member squad captained by all-rounder Dhananjaya de Silva, with Kamindu Mendis as vice-captain. The hosts will be without two key batters — Kusal Mendis and Pathum Nissanka — both ruled out through injury, opening the door for the experienced Niroshan Dickwella to return behind the stumps for the first time since 2023. Debutant contenders Pasindu Sooriyabandara and off-spinner Keshara Nuwantha have also been included. The bowling attack is built around left-arm spinner Prabath Jayasuriya, off-spinner Ramesh Mendis, and a pace unit of Asitha Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, Milan Rathnayake, Vishwa Fernando and Dilshan Madushanka.

Venue and Pitch Report

Galle International Stadium is renowned as one of the most spin-friendly surfaces in world cricket. The pitch tends to be dry and slow from the outset, with turn and variable bounce increasing sharply from the third day onward. Sri Lanka’s stacked spin department — featuring three frontline slow bowlers plus part-time options from Dhananjaya and Kamindu — is tailor-made for these conditions, and India’s own spin resources in Jadeja, Kuldeep and Suthar will be central to how competitive the tourists are on turning tracks.

SSC Ground, Colombo, historically offers a slightly different challenge: a truer, more even surface in the first two days that still tends to deteriorate and assist spin as the match progresses, while also rewarding disciplined new-ball bowling under overcast coastal conditions. Both venues place a premium on top-order batting technique against spin, an area India will be watching closely given the amount of turn expected across the fortnight.

Head-to-Head Context

India have historically enjoyed the upper hand over Sri Lanka in Test cricket and arrive as clear favourites on paper, despite the series representing a fresh chapter for both sides — Gill leading a young Indian unit without the security of a fully fit Bumrah, and de Silva marshalling a Sri Lankan squad reshaped by injuries to senior batters. History offers only limited comfort, though: Sri Lanka’s home conditions and India’s slightly unsettled pace attack could make this a closer contest than the overall record suggests, particularly if Galle turns as sharply as it usually does from day three onward.

It’s also worth noting that this is India’s first Test tour of the island in nine years, so neither the current playing group nor the coaching staff carries much recent first-hand experience of these specific surfaces. That inexperience cuts both ways: India’s spinners will be facing conditions unlike anything on offer at home, while several members of the batting unit — including Jaiswal and Sudharsan, if fit — will be tested against genuine turn for the first time at this level away from home. Sri Lanka, by contrast, know these pitches intimately, even if their batting depth has been diminished by the unavailability of Kusal Mendis and Pathum Nissanka.

Tour Structure and Scheduling Logic

One detail that stands out about this tour is the sheer gap between its two legs. Rather than clubbing the red-ball and white-ball fixtures into a single continuous trip — as has often been the case in past bilateral tours — the boards have opted to split the assignment by format and by hosting country. India travel to Sri Lanka purely for Tests in August, while Sri Lanka make the return trip to India purely for white-ball cricket in December. This kind of format-specific splitting has become increasingly common on the international calendar as boards try to protect players from excessive travel fatigue while still fitting bilateral cricket around a congested FTP that includes IPL windows, ICC events and other bilateral commitments for both nations.

For broadcasters and fans, it effectively creates two distinct viewing windows months apart: a five-day-format, subcontinent-conditions series in August that will interest purists and fantasy players tracking WTC implications, followed by a fast-paced, six-match white-ball sprint in December that plays out entirely across India’s own venues and time zones, making it far more accessible to the domestic audience in terms of viewing hours.

White-Ball Leg: Sri Lanka Tour of India

Four months after the Test series wraps up, the two sides reconvene on Indian soil for a concentrated white-ball tour running from December 13 to 27, 2026. This leg comprises three ODIs followed immediately by three T20Is, giving Indian fans a run of six limited-overs internationals inside a fortnight.

ODI Series Schedule

The ODI leg opens in Delhi before moving south to Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium — traditionally a high-scoring venue with a fast outfield — and concludes at the world’s largest cricket stadium, the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, a ground that has hosted marquee India fixtures including World Cup matches in recent years.

T20I Series Schedule

The T20I leg, billed as the concluding stretch of the white-ball tour, takes the series through Rajkot and the historic Barabati Stadium in Cuttack before wrapping up in Pune, with all three matches under lights starting at 7:00 PM IST — a scheduling choice that typically favours chasing sides given dew factors at most of these venues in late December.

Squads and Availability

Squads for the white-ball leg had not been finalised at the time of publishing, and both boards are expected to name their ODI and T20I groups closer to the series, likely factoring in workload management for players who feature across the IPL, bilateral white-ball cycles, and the broader ICC events calendar through the rest of 2026. Once confirmed, playing XIs for both formats are likely to lean on core white-ball regulars rather than the personnel used in the August Test series, given the gap between the two legs and the different format demands.

Why This Tour Matters

For India, the Test series is squarely about World Test Championship points. With the 2025–27 cycle underway, every result in Sri Lanka feeds directly into qualification for a place in the WTC final, and a side under a relatively new captain in Shubman Gill will want to establish an early rhythm on a tour that has historically been challenging for touring teams, spin conditions notwithstanding India’s own overall dominance in the fixture.

For Sri Lanka, hosting India at home represents a chance to pick up crucial WTC points on favourable, spin-friendly surfaces, even while missing two experienced top-order batters. A callup-heavy squad featuring uncapped talents like Keshara Nuwantha and Pasindu Sooriyabandara also signals a broader rebuilding phase for Lankan cricket as it looks toward the next generation of Test players.

The December white-ball leg, by contrast, is lower-stakes in terms of ICC standings but high in visibility, landing in the middle of India’s domestic cricket season and giving fans across five different Indian cities — Delhi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Cuttack and Pune — the chance to watch India host Sri Lanka in the flesh. Expect these matches to double as auditions for fringe players heading into India’s 2027 assignments, particularly in the T20I format where team combinations are still evolving.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the India vs Sri Lanka Test series begin? The two-match Test series begins on August 15, 2026, at the Galle International Stadium, with the second and final Test starting August 23 at the SSC Ground in Colombo.

Who is captaining each side in the Tests? Shubman Gill captains India, with KL Rahul as vice-captain. Dhananjaya de Silva leads Sri Lanka, with Kamindu Mendis as his deputy.

Is Jasprit Bumrah playing in the Test series? Bumrah was initially named in India’s squad subject to fitness clearance but was subsequently ruled out through injury and replaced by Auqib Nabi.

When does the white-ball leg of the tour take place? Sri Lanka’s white-ball tour of India runs from December 13 to 27, 2026, comprising three ODIs followed by three T20Is.

Where are the ODIs and T20Is being played? The three ODIs are scheduled for Delhi, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, while the three T20Is will be played in Rajkot, Cuttack and Pune.

What time do the Test matches start? Both Tests begin at 10:00 AM IST, with the local Sri Lankan start time being 4:30 AM GMT.

Does this tour include any ODIs or T20Is in Sri Lanka? No. The August leg of the tour is a pure red-ball assignment with no limited-overs matches attached; the white-ball fixtures are being hosted separately by India in December.