Rinku and Kishan in as Gill misses out on India’s T20 World Cup squad with Axar Patel named vice-captain in his stead.
Gill left out of India’s T20 World Cup squad; Rinku and Kishan make comebacks.
Vice-captain Shubman Gill was left off of India’s 2026 T20 World Cup roster. The selectors chose Rinku Singh and Ishan Kishan for the 15-man roster, therefore Jitesh Sharma was also left out. The vice-captain was Axar Patel.
The five-match Twenty20 International series versus New Zealand will be played by the same team.
After defeating South Africa in the 2024 edition final, India is the reigning champion.
Ishan Kishan was rewarded for a stellar run in the recently-concluded Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament. In Jharkhand’s victorious campaign, Kishan was the star performer for them, scoring 500+ runs at a strike rate of 197 that also had 2 50+ scores and two hundreds. He scored a phenomenal 45-ball 100 in the final s Jharkhand scored a mammoth 263 en route to victory.
Gill’s ouster was probably the biggest talking point of them all. While the reason for his ouster was said to be the team management’s call of having a keeper in the top order to give the side flexibility, one could not ignore the lean run of scores in his last few T20i’s where he has gone without a 50 in his last 18 innings.
India’s squad for T20 World Cup 2026
Suryakumar Yadav (capt), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel (vice-capt), Rinku Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy, Washington Sundar, Ishan Kishan (wk)