“Nobody should leave a match-winner” - Ex-selector slams Indian selection committee for dropping Yashasvi Jaiswal from T20I squad

Former Indian chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar has stated that it is unfortunate that the Southpaw opening batter Yashasvi Jaiswal had to miss out on the ICC T20 World Cup 2026 squad, ‘for no fault of his’.

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Speaking exclusively to PTI, if he were the chairman of the selectors, Vengsarkar asserted that he wouldn’t have dropped him in the first place. Notably, Jaiswal has been in the squad and reserves for two years, but couldn’t make it to the XI in the shortest format of the game.

“It is unfortunate that Yashasvi is being left out time and again for no fault of his. He has been in tremendous form across all formats of the game and I don’t know what else he has to do to get into the team. Nobody should leave a match-winner out of the team,” Dilip Vengsarkar told PTI. 

“I wouldn’t have told him anything because I wouldn’t have dropped him in the first place,” he added.

While the former cricketer agreed with the selection committee on dropping Shubman Gill, who has been suffering from poor form in T20Is, he reckoned that Jaiswal should’ve replaced Gill in the squad.

“They are all excellent players but I am with selection committee when they judge players on basis of current form and fitness. Current form does play an important role in context of selection. And if you ask whom I would have picked instead of Gill, my choice would have been Jaiswal. He has proven time and again what a class performer he is and has always given the team kind of starts required these days,” 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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