India’s Asian Games gold medal match and their third ODI against West Indies are on the same day
India need two men’s teams in late September, and their women go from a possible Asia Cup final in Dubai to an Asian Games quarter-final in Japan five days later.
Aug 27, 2026
On 3 October, India play the third one-day international against West Indies at New Chandigarh. On the same day, in a city outside Nagoya, the Asian Games cricket gold medal match is scheduled for two in the afternoon Japan time, which is half past ten in the morning in India. India are the holders.
Both of those are India teams. They cannot be the same one.
Two men’s squads, in two countries, in the same nine days
The Asian Games men’s tournament runs from 24 September to 3 October at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin, in Aichi prefecture. It is a T20 competition with ten teams. India do not play in the preliminary round at all: they are one of four sides seeded straight into the quarter-finals on ICC ranking, so their tournament starts with a quarter-final on 28 September, a semi-final on 1 October if they win it, and the medal matches on 3 October.
The BCCI named that squad back on 6 June. Shreyas Iyer captains, Tilak Varma is his deputy, Jasprit Bumrah is in it, and so is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is 15 and got there on the back of 776 runs in 16 matches for Rajasthan Royals last IPL.
The West Indies land in India in the middle of all that, for three ODIs and five T20Is. The ODIs are on 27 September at Thiruvananthapuram, 30 September at Guwahati and 3 October at New Chandigarh, and the T20Is run through to 17 October at Bengaluru. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have both retired from Tests and T20 internationals and play only ODIs now, and both are expected back for this series, which would be their first India appearance since the England tour. No squad has been announced yet.
Line the two up and the overlap is not a near miss. India’s Asian Games quarter-final in Japan is on 28 September. The first ODI in Kerala is on 27 September. Their semi-final is on 1 October, the second ODI is one day before it, and the gold medal match and the third ODI share a date.
The women have the harder version of the same problem
India’s women are in Dubai right now for the Women’s Asia Cup, which finishes with the final on 13 September. The women’s cricket tournament at the Asian Games is a straight knockout played from 17 to 22 September in the same Japanese ground, and India have been drawn against the hosts in the fourth quarter-final on 18 September.
So the worst case, which is also the best case, is that Harmanpreet Kaur’s side play an Asia Cup final in Dubai on the 13th and a Games quarter-final in Japan five days later. Go out in the group stage instead and they get an easier week.
There is no second squad to absorb it either. Compare the two lists and thirteen of the fifteen names are the same. Harmanpreet, Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, G Kamalini, Radha Yadav, Renuka Singh Thakur, Kranti Gaud, Arundhati Reddy, Sree Charani, Bharti Fulmali and Nandni Sharma are down for both. Jemimah Rodrigues was picked for both and has been ruled out of both after tearing a hamstring in the Hundred on 3 August. Pratika Rawal replaced her.
Why India cannot just send a weak team
India won both cricket golds at Hangzhou in their first Asian Games as a cricketing nation, the men beating Afghanistan and the women beating Sri Lanka. Turning up in Japan with a third-choice side and losing the lot would sit badly with what the BCCI has been arguing everywhere else. It backed the ICC’s push to get cricket into the Olympics, and the sport returns at Los Angeles in 2028 as a six-team T20 event for men and women. India’s women have already qualified for it, as the highest-placed eligible Asian side at this year’s T20 World Cup.
The format does not help. Both tournaments are knockouts from the moment India enter them, so one flat afternoon ends the defence of a gold medal. There is no group stage to recover in.
And the setting will be strange for anyone used to Indian cricket crowds. Korogi Sports Park is owned by the Japan Cricket Association, was converted from a baseball facility and only finished construction in March. It holds about 300 people normally. Temporary stands will lift that to roughly 2,000 for the Games. Two Asian Games titles will be defended in front of a crowd that would not fill one stand at the Wankhede.
What India have done is the only thing available: name a proper T20 squad for Japan in June and leave the ODI series to the ODI players, which happens to be where Rohit and Kohli now live. It works on paper. It also means that for about ten days in late September, the depth of Indian cricket stops being a talking point and becomes a scheduling requirement.