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On Saturday, December 20, the Indian national selection committee, led by Ajit Agarkar, came out with a late twist by axing the Indian vice-captain Shubman Gill from the T20 World Cup 2026 squad.
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Notably, Gill could make only 291 runs from his last 15 T20I innings at an average of 24.24 and a strike rate of 137.26 without scoring a fifty. Multiple sources told IANS on Sunday that the decision to omit Gill was ‘tough, but necessary.’
“To leave out Gill, it was a tough but necessary decision. It was taken in the interest of the team. The people in charge of the T20I team had realised a while back that their plan with Gill in it wasn't working. It was about when they change, and this course correction was done on the squad's selection day,” sources told IANS.
The news agency also revealed that there was a strong interest within the think tank team to get Sanju Samson back to the opening slot and get in Rinku Singh as the finisher to assist Hardik Pandya. This decision was taken during the fourth T20I against South Africa, which was abandoned due to excessive fog.
However, the selection committee decided to stay with the Indian skipper Suryakumar Yadav, who could score only 244 runs from his last 22 T20I innings without hitting a single fifty. The source revealed that it would look foolish if they had dropped the captain in the World Cup selection meeting.
“Nobody was going to drop a captain in a World Cup selection meeting. That would have made for a foolish look,” said the sources.
India’s T20 World Cup 2026 Squad: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rinku Singh.
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