The West In­dies crick­et team will open their three-Test se­ries against Aus­tralia with a clash at Ho­bart in Tas­ma­nia.The se­ries which will com­prise three Test match­es will be­gin on De­cem­ber 10 at the Blund­stone Are­na in Ho­bart.The play­ers will then trav­el to Mel­bourne for the an­nu­al Box­ing Day Test, which will be played from De­cem­ber 26.

The se­ries will wrap up in the new year with a Jan­u­ary 3 clash at the Syd­ney Crick­et Ground (SCG).There will be no lim­it­ed overs match­es or T20s on the tour.Sim­i­lar­ly, Aus­tralia played two Test match­es against the West In­dies ear­li­er this year in the Caribbean and there were no lim­it­ed overs or T20 match­es on that tour. Aus­tralia won the se­ries 2-0 with con­vinc­ing wins in Do­mini­ca and Sabi­na Park in Ja­maica.

Pri­or to this tour of Aus­tralia, West In­dies is ex­pect­ed to vis­it Africa and then Asia for two se­ries. On Au­gust 19, they will be­gin their tour of Zim­bab­we, as they take part in a tri-se­ries in­volv­ing Pak­istan. This se­ries ends on Sep­tem­ber 4 and the West In­dies will be look­ing to se­cure their place in the next Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy in Eng­land in 2017.

West In­dies is cur­rent­ly eighth in the ICC rank­ings and by Sep­tem­ber 30, needs to be in the top eight, or miss out.

As it stands, Bangladesh is sev­enth and five points ahead of them and Pak­istan is ninth–one point be­low the West In­dies. Af­ter this as­sign­ment, the West In­dies trav­el to Sri Lan­ka where they will play against that coun­try in three Test match­es, five ODIs and two T20s.There is al­so talk of the WICB ne­go­ti­at­ing with the Bangladesh Crick­et Board (BCB) to play a num­ber of T20 match­es af­ter the Sri Lankan se­ries, as prepa­ra­tion for the next T20 World Cup to be held in In­dia next Feb­ru­ary.