When it comes to the one-day internationals in the later part of the tour next March and April, scheduling is even more eccentric, only Goa of the seven venues being renowned as an attractive place for a holiday.

No doubt Indore, Guwahati, Faridabad, Cuttack, Cochin, and Visakahapatnam have their attractions but the India tourist industry, the many agents selling trips from Britain and all planning to visit India for what should be an intriguing series of games must have felt a mixture of fury, bemusement and disappointment when the list of venues was announced in India this weekend.

The decision-making of the Indian board is often the result of an unfathomable process mired in political compromise between the regions.

The official explanation is that these cities have been chosen on a rotational basis. The cynical guess might be that it is a plan to destabilise the successful England team, sending them to grounds that will suit India’s spinners and where there may not be the luxurious hotels to which they have become accustomed. Economically, the places make no sense.

Having set a deadline of the end of the month for India to put venues to the dates that had already been announced, the ECB will now try to relocate at least some of the matches. A spokesman for the ECB said: “We have now learnt of the itinerary proposed and we will be discussing it internally before responding.”

The two main areas of concern are logistics of travel for players, supporters and the accompanying media contingent, and the need for families of members of the party to drop in and out.

For the one-day leg in particular, flights will be anything but straightforward as plans stand and the limited-overs series — the final commitment of the winter — promises to be as gruelling as the schedule of seven matches in 15 days in South Africa earlier this year, even with the allocation of four days extra.

When Australia have toured India in recent years, their officials have made it plain that they would accept only the leading cities. No ifs or buts. It is hard to believe that the ECB has argued the case for travelling to the traditional Test and international venues sufficiently robustly. Officials are understood to have been taken by surprise when they saw the proposals at the weekend. If they immediately reached for the atlas, then they were not alone.

Precedent suggests that the matter has some way to run. On England’s previous tour in 2001-02 the Indian board demanded an extra one-day international even when the Test series was under way after a previously constituted body had agreed to play only five matches. The ECB agreed, but refused the second part of the request, to play five rather than three Test matches this time around.

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