Gurnoor Brar has nine wickets in three ODIs, and he has replaced Kuldeep in India’s Test squad for New Zealand
Kuldeep Yadav has been released to play domestic cricket in India, which leaves the squad for the Wellington Test with six frontline seamers and two spinning allrounders.
Nov 14, 2026
Gurnoor Brar will not play the fifth ODI at Bay Oval on Sunday. He is going to Wellington instead, where India’s Test squad is getting ready for the first of two Tests against New Zealand, starting at the Basin Reserve on 19 November. He takes the place of Kuldeep Yadav, whom the BCCI has released “in order to play the ongoing domestic cricket back in India”.
No one has been called up to replace Brar in the one-day squad, and Kuldeep is still listed in it for Sunday. India lead that series 2-1 going into the decider.
Nine wickets in three games
Brar earned this on the tour. His returns in the three ODIs played to a finish are 3 for 44, 4 for 30 and 2 for 69, the last of them on Friday, when New Zealand won by 244 runs and India were bowled out for 89. The game in Hamilton was washed out without a ball bowled.
He has not played a Test yet. The Punjab quick has put his success on this tour down to a hard-length plan and the extra bounce his height gives him, and that is not a bad skill set to take to the Basin Reserve.
Six seamers, two spinners
The swap changes the look of the squad. India now have six frontline seamers: Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Anshul Kamboj and Brar, plus Nitish Kumar Reddy as a seam-bowling allrounder. With Kuldeep gone, the only spinners left are Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, and both of them bat as well.
The BCCI’s statement gave domestic cricket as the reason. Still, a squad with six seamers and no specialist spinner tells you what India expect the Basin Reserve to offer.
How fit is the pace attack?
Six seamers sounds like plenty. Look closer and it is less settled. Bumrah has not played a Test since November 2025. In the rain-hit third four-day game between India A and New Zealand A in Lincoln, which was drawn on 10 November, he bowled six overs for 11 runs and did not take a wicket. Prasidh, coming back from injury, bowled five overs in the same game and took two wickets. Akash Deep missed a long stretch of this year, IPL 2026 included, with a back injury.
Siraj is in the Test squad but was not sent to the Test camp. He travelled with the ODI squad and did not get a game in the first four matches. With Brar gone, he could finally get one at Bay Oval on Sunday.
Pant is back with the group
There was better news on Rishabh Pant. The BCCI confirmed that he has joined the Test preparations in Wellington. The board’s medical staff had cleared him after he recovered from a side strain. The second Test is in Christchurch from 27 November.
India’s Test squad: Shubman Gill (captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, B Sai Sudharsan, Rishabh Pant (wk), Dhruv Jurel (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Anshul Kamboj, Gurnoor Brar.