“Could Yashasvi Jaiswal have been there?” - Ex-Indian cricketer opens up on Jaiswal’s exclusion for T20 World Cup 2026

Former Indian cricketer and commentator Aakash Chopra has opened up on the Indian opening batter Yashasvi Jaiswal’s exclusion from the Indian squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup 2026 campaign, scheduled to be played in India and Sri Lanka early next year.

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Speaking exclusively on his YouTube channel, Chopra strolled down memory lane on how exactly Jaiswal lost his place in the Indian T20I side to Sanju Samson eventually. Notably, with Shubman Gill emerging as the captain since the Asia Cup 2025 campaign, Jaiswal was sidelined from the playing XI. 

“The way Yashasvi plays, logically, he should come in the team first, and he was there. He was part of the team in the 2024 T20 World Cup. He didn’t get a chance to play for a simple reason that there was no place. He even scored a century when he played before that. His name is there among the six Indians to have scored centuries in all formats,” Aakash Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

“However, there were a lot of Tests after that and he wasn’t picked for T20s. It was believed that Yashasvi was ahead in the pecking order. In the interim, Abhishek and Sanju opened and did well, and suddenly you realise there is no place. After that, when the opening comes, India goes with Shubman Gill,” he added.

“They not only went with him, but they also made him the vice-captain, which means he cannot be dropped. I had picked Yashasvi in the Asia Cup team I had picked. However, Shubman became the vice-captain, and the rest, as they say, is history. So Yashasvi, who was actually a frontrunner, was forgotten,” Chopra observed.

“Now when they left Shubman out, could Yashasvi have been there? He couldn’t have been there because the opener is Sanju Samson. So you will have to keep a wicketkeeper-opener as a backup. If we don’t do that, assuming Sanju has a stomach upset or has a fever before the game, what will you do?” said Chopra.

Furthermore, Chopra also reckoned that while Jaiswal has to wait for his chance, he added that the upcoming IPL 2026 season would be very important for Jaiswal, who has been scoring runs quite consistently since 2023.

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“It seemed like Yash would 100 percent be part of the team, especially once Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma had taken retirement. He will have to still wait. This IPL will be important for him, but it’s very hard not to feel for Yashasvi because he has been scoring runs since 2023 and it’s 2025 now,” he concluded.

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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