India’s Asian Games squad is down to 14, and Vipraj Nigam has never played for India
Varun Chakravarthy’s side strain and Nitish Kumar Reddy’s move to the West Indies ODI squad have left Shreyas Iyer with 14 players for the gold medal defence in Japan.
Sep 17, 2026
India’s Asian Games squad has lost two players in two days and replaced only one of them. Shreyas Iyer will take 14 cricketers to Japan rather than 15, and one of the names on that list has never played international cricket.
A side strain in Delhi, and a first call-up
Varun Chakravarthy went first. He felt something in his left side while bowling his third over in the opening T20I against Afghanistan at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 13 September. A scan the next day found a side strain and ruled him out of the rest of that series, with Ravi Bishnoi taking his place in the XI for the second match. On Wednesday the board confirmed the injury had taken the Asian Games from him too.
Vipraj Nigam takes his place, in the Asian Games squad and in the one-off T20I against Japan at Sano on 22 September. It is the 22-year-old’s first India call-up. Reports of the selection meeting say the shortlist ran to two names, Nigam and Kuldeep Yadav, and Kuldeep was never really available: he is in the ODI squad for the West Indies series that runs at the same time.
Nitish Reddy leaves and nobody replaces him
The second departure is the stranger one. Nitish Kumar Reddy has been withdrawn from the Asian Games squad, and not because anything is wrong with him. He has been picked for the three ODIs against West Indies instead.
The two commitments sit on top of each other almost exactly. The ODI series starts on 27 September and finishes on 3 October. India’s Asian Games campaign begins with a quarter-final on 28 September and the gold medal match is on 3 October. A player can be in Japan or he can be in India. Reddy is staying home.
What makes it read oddly is that nobody has come in for him. Chakravarthy got a replacement within a day. Reddy has not, which leaves Iyer with 14 players for a knockout tournament in conditions none of them have played in.
What India are getting in Nigam
Nigam is a leg-spinner from Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh who bats a long way down and hits it a long way. Delhi Capitals bought him for Rs 50 lakh at the 2025 mega auction, which at the time looked like a squad-filler signing, and he made 39 off 15 balls on debut against Lucknow Super Giants.
The innings that got him noticed came earlier, in the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he made 27 off eight balls to push Uttar Pradesh into the quarter-finals. Less than two years on, he is on a plane to Japan.
He is not a like-for-like replacement for Chakravarthy, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Chakravarthy is a mystery spinner India have leaned on in the tournaments that matter. Nigam is a leg-spinner with a season and a half of IPL cricket behind him who offers batting the senior man does not. India already have Ravi Bishnoi, Axar Patel and Washington Sundar in the squad, so the spin department is not short of bodies.
The defence starts on 28 September
India are the reigning champions, and the way they became champions is worth remembering. They won the men’s gold at Hangzhou in October 2023 without finishing the final, which rain washed out with Afghanistan 112 for 5, and the medal went to India on their higher ICC T20I ranking. Seeding is doing them a favour again. India are one of the four highest-ranked teams here, which buys a bye through the group stage and makes a quarter-final on 28 September their opening match.
The squad Iyer has left is still strong: Jasprit Bumrah and Arshdeep Singh with the new ball, Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma at the top, Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan both keeping, and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi somewhere in the middle of it all at 15. Fourteen is enough to win a T20 tournament. It is not much of a cushion if somebody pulls up in the warm-up.