India will play three T20Is against Australia, and a series of three T20Is and three ODIs against South Africa, all at home, between September 20 and October 11. These will be the last fixtures for all three teams before they travel to the men's T20 World Cup in Australia, to be held from October 16.

The three T20Is against Australia will be played in Mohali, Nagpur and Hyderabad on September 20, 23 and 25 respectively. The South Africa T20Is will be played between September 28 and October 3 in Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Indore, while the ODIs, which follow, will be played in Ranchi, Lucknow and Delhi, between October 6 and 11.

With the first-choice T20I players expected to leave for Australia around the time of the ODIs against South Africa, India - as well as South Africa - could well field a second-string team for those three matches.

It isn't new, with India having fielded second-string teams often of late, sometimes because of concurrent series in different parts of the world, and occasionally to give the regular players a break from what is increasingly becoming a jampacked calendar, slotting in bilateral series and world events as well as T20 franchise leagues.