The ICC’s incoming 2027-2031 Future Tours Programme is set to sharply cut low-stakes bilateral cricket, replacing scattered fixtures with series built around qualification, rivalry and real stakes. Chief executive Sanjog Gupta says cricket cannot keep sustaining matches without context, culture, competition and competitiveness, since each demands genuine financial and non-financial investment from member boards. Hong Kong meetings later this year will finalise the calendar, with England, India and Australia already locked into their fixtures, while everyone else is still negotiating theirs, board by board.
Gupta Draws A Line Under Random Series
Sanjog Gupta, who became ICC chief executive on July 7, 2025, the seventh person to hold the post, used a PTI interview published August 12-13, 2026, to argue that bilateral cricket without a clear purpose has run its course. Boards, he said, cannot keep funding fixtures carrying no context, culture, competition or competitiveness.
The timing was not incidental. Gupta’s comments landed the same week Jonty Rhodes spoke in Mumbai on August 12, 2026, just as the ICC prepares to finalise the FTP in Hong Kong. Random, one-off assignments are, in his view, the clearest casualty of a calendar rebuilt around meaning over volume.
ICC FTP 2027 2031 bilateral scheduling
The men’s Future Tours Programme runs out in April 2027, with the World Test Championship final set for June 2027 in England closing the cycle. The 2027 Men’s ODI World Cup, co-hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia from October 4 to November 21, 2027, opens the next cycle.
A meeting pencilled in for August 2026 is meant to settle most of the calendar. England, India and Australia have locked in headline fixtures already, while most other Full Members have not, and a review precedes sign-off in Hong Kong, dates still unconfirmed.
The biggest unresolved question is the Test structure: whether it expands to twelve Full Members, adding Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan, and whether one-off Tests can earn points within it. Roger Twose’s working group has examined expansion but presented no concrete proposal as of May 2026.
Random Fixtures Have Lost Their Meaning
The ODI Super League ran from 2020 to 2023, briefly giving one-day cricket real stakes by tying results to World Cup qualification. It was scrapped after one cycle, and a 14-team World Cup has since cut qualification loose from bilateral standings. White-ball series are expected to shrink further, with quadrangular tournaments, two teams per region, proposed alongside more A-team fixtures against Associates.
Graeme Smith, the former South Africa captain and SA20 commissioner, said in 2025 that cricket outside the leading nations feels thin on context with four scattered games and no consequence, naming the post-2027 period as the inflection point. Rhodes predicted fewer such series but plenty of surviving 50-over cricket, noting Twenty20 never killed Tests as feared even as ODIs stay most exposed.
The 5,000th ODI, Scotland versus Canada in Dundee, symbolises the scheduling Gupta wants gone. Nick Hockley, Australia’s former chief executive, called for more jeopardy in these fixtures, and David Richardson, a former ICC boss, argued an agreed FTP gives matches clarity and context.
The Four Levers Reshaping ODI Cricket
Gupta’s pitch rests on four levers driving real attention and affiliation: context, culture, competition and competitiveness. Context means every match carries consequence beyond the result, something the WTC delivers for Tests while ODI context leans on World Cup preparation cycles. Culture covers tradition between nations, why England, India and Australia locked in fixtures first, protecting series like the Ashes and India-England clashes.
Competition means matchups between sides of comparable quality rather than mismatches with nothing riding on them, part of the logic behind proposed quadrangular T20 tournaments. Competitiveness is matches staying close enough to hold an audience, the piece Gupta leans on hardest arguing ODIs can thrive inside a World Cup structure.
Other pieces move in parallel. Proposed WTC semi-finals would add jeopardy to red-ball cricket, and the 2027 World Cup is being reshaped with a Super Series round and Super 7 stage, changes Cricket Scotland and the Dutch have criticised for raising the bar for Associates. The direction is unmistakable: ICC FTP 2027 2031 bilateral scheduling is being built to reward context over volume, and the random series Gupta singled out look set to be the first casualty.
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