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India won the previous edition of this competition in the Americas in June 2024. Under Rohit Sharma, they mounted a fantastic, unbeaten campaign. They swept every game they played in the league (their match against Canada in Lauderhill was a non-starter owing to an unfit outfield) and Super Eight stages, brushed England aside in the semifinal and overcame a spirited challenge in the title round from an eventually self-destructing South Africa, who somehow went down by seven runs when it appeared a lot easier to wrap their hands around the trophy.
As is inevitable irrespective of the outcome, there was a churn after the last World Cup, with preparations for the next edition beginning almost immediately. Unlike the 50-over iteration which comes about every four years, the T20 World Cup is a biennial affair. Rohit, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja retired from internationals T20s immediately after the World Cup, which automatically meant alternative resources to fill giant boots had to be identified. There were also exigencies of form that needed to be factored in, alongside the increasingly dynamic demands of the format and the emergence of new talent that could not be overlooked or ignored.
Sanju Samson. | Photo Credit: VIJAY SONEJI
There are several common threads to the 15 chosen for the title defence with those that played a year and a half ago – Suryakumar Yadav (now the skipper), Axar Patel (his new old deputy), Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Sanju Samson and Kuldeep Yadav were all part of the side that lifted the trophy in the Americas – and also a host of different, if not new, faces. The seven who figured in 2024 but are missing now are Rohit, Kohli and Jadeja (all retired), reserve opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, pacer Mohammed Siraj and leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, who have been replaced (for want of a better word) by Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Washington Sundar, Ishan Kishan, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy and Rinku Singh.
Anyone who doesn’t think India boast a formidable, deadly dangerous outfit that is both ranked and is playing like the No. 1 T20 team in the 20-over world needs to think again. And maybe have themselves scrutinised mentally. India have won each of their seven assignments since Suryakumar replaced Rohit on a full-time basis from the tour of Sri Lanka in July last year. Either side of six bilateral conquests, three each at home and away in Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia, is a flawless 7-0 scoreline stacked up at the Asia Cup in the Emirates in September, when they swatted Pakistan aside thrice in as many Sundays though they were forced to dig deep in the final. India have lost a mere four of their last 29 matches and never more than once in a series; to install them as favourites to go all the way when they will play all matches (except those against Pakistan) at home will appear the most natural thing to do.
The Gill conundrum
It was leading into the said Asia Cup that those tasked with making the big cricketing decisions in Indian cricket bared their hand. Whether they got carried away by Shubman Gill’s inspirational Test display in England, or whether their decision was driven by the necessity to have an all-format captain not too far into the future is debatable. What is not is the selectors throwing most of their eggs in the Gill captaincy basket.
In his first outings as the Test captain, Gill was at his subliminal best as a batter, having the connoisseur and the layman eating out of his hand with his command over the England bowling. In the preceding four, Gill had failed to announce himself outside the subcontinent, with a high of just 36 in 18 Test innings in the Caribbean, England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. But entrusting with leading the side into the future once Rohit called it quits from the five-day game, the real Gill stood up, batting with flair and authority and absolute dominance on his way to 754 wondrous runs. Gill also acquitted himself creditably in the leadership stakes, his exploits rubbing off on his mates as young India came away with an honourable 2-2 draw against Bazballing England. There is no such thing as a moral victory in sport, but if it was a thing, India would have walked away with that honour.
Did that convince those running Indian cricket that Gill was ready to assume charge as the next poster boy of Indian cricket? Potentially, because immediately after the team returned from Old Blighty with its head held high, Gill replaced Rohit as the 50-over skipper and was brought back in from the cold to occupy the throne of the T20I vice-captain to Suryakumar. It wasn’t a warning of sorts to the older Mumbaikar, just a loud and unequivocal assertion that Gill was being readied to follow in the footsteps of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Kohli and Rohit and become the next captain across formats, most likely after the T20 World Cup at home and in Sri Lanka in February-March.
Even at the time, without the luxury, benefit and wisdom of hindsight, it seemed as if Gill was being burdened with too much too soon. As it is, before he spearheaded India’s Test challenge in England, he had very little experience of captaincy at the first-class or 50-over levels. His only real tryst with a designated leadership role was in the IPL, where he led Gujarat Titans for the last two seasons after Pandya moved back to Mumbai Indians. Given his hitherto limited scope as a captain, to saddle him with so much responsibility in such a compressed period of time seemed overkill, and particularly so given that India were flitting from continent to continent and back, and from format to format, at the drop of a hat.
Predictably, Gill felt the heat, professing to mental more than physical fatigue but not immune to physical setbacks either. First came the neck spasms during the first Test against South Africa in Kolkata last month which forced him to miss the second Test (he batted just three balls at Eden Gardens) and the subsequent ODI series. Then, he sustained a blow to his toe which ruled him out of the final two T20Is last week.
By this time, his T20I form had taken a spectacular nosedive. Since making it back to the T20I squad at the Asia Cup after 13 and a half months on the sidelines, his highest in 15 innings was a modest 47 against Pakistan. He had come into the 20-over side at the expense of Samson, in a manner of speaking, slotting in as Abhishek’s opening partner and forcing the wicketkeeper to drop down the order. At an unfamiliar position, Samson failed to get going and eventually lost his spot in the XI to Jitesh Sharma, more accomplished and experienced as a middle-order ’keeper-batter.
But as Gill’s batting woes continued to mount, it was becoming increasingly difficult for Ajit Agarkar’s selection panel and for head coach Gautam Gambhir to reconcile to the new normal where two of the top four batters, both in a leadership role, were delivering practically nothing. Gill alone in poor run-making touch might still have been tempting to overlook if all the other top-order cogs were ticking over smoothly. But Suryakumar has been in an even more prolonged drought. The explosive 35-year-old started his career as captain in his own right with a blazing half-century in Pallekele in July last year but has added only one more 50-plus knock in the last year and a half. In 2025, 19 innings have yielded a highest of 47 not out to go with nine single-digit scores and a mere two efforts of more than 25. These are terribly disappointing numbers, offset somewhat by the stellar record Suryakumar has stacked up as captain, which gives him greater leeway than Gill.
It took three and a half months for Agarkar’s panel to recognise what was evident to almost everyone else far earlier and axe Gill, if only for the time being. The official line is that team combination exigencies led to Gill’s exclusion once the think-tank was convinced that India needed a wicketkeeper-batter to partner dynamic opener Abhishek. How they suddenly came to this conclusion after splitting the extremely successful Abhishek-Samson pair to accommodate Gill is baffling, but no more than what has been the norm in the last few months when questionable calls have pretty much been de rigueur.
Rinku Singh. | Photo Credit: PTI
A dramatic recall from out of the blue of Ishan Kishan is in keeping with the selectoral mood-swing that has been the flavour of the Agarkar-Gambhir combine. Kishan was put out to pasture when he returned from South Africa midway through an all-format tour in December 2023, citing the need for a break from the game, and then rebuffed suggestions to turn out for Jharkhand in domestic action. Dumped from the central contracts list, he found himself confronted by a rocky road back though to his credit, he has gutsed it out and has now been rewarded with a national call-up, ostensibly at the expense of Jitesh. Apart from being a finisher who is a terrific force of nature in the middle order, Jitesh has done nothing wrong and still finds himself having to watch the World Cup on TV, like the rest of us. And to think that only last week, Jitesh appeared a shoo-in for the mega competition. Most of the rest of the squad has picked itself. Samson for Gill, a belated if forced development, is the right call, though the decision should have been more organic and timely instead of being a last-minute afterthought, almost, with so much at stake.
