Rohit and Kohli are back in India’s ODI squad, and Rishabh Pant has been sent to the Irani Cup

The Men’s Selection Committee sat down in Delhi on Wednesday evening and came out with three squads rather than one. India named a fifteen for the three ODIs against West Indies, a separate fifteen for the five T20Is that follow, and a Rest of India side for the Irani Cup. Rishabh Pant is in exactly one of them, and it is not either of the white-ball teams.

Rohit and Kohli are both back

Shubman Gill keeps the ODI captaincy and KL Rahul has been named his deputy, a change forced by geography rather than by form. Shreyas Iyer, the regular ODI vice-captain, is taking an India team to the Asian Games in Japan at the same time.

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are both in the fifteen. Neither has played a one-day international since 19 July, when India lost the third ODI at Lord’s by 27 runs. Rohit made 138 in that game and Kohli 74, and both innings have hung over every selection conversation since. It is difficult to leave out a 39-year-old opener who has just scored a hundred at Lord’s. It is equally difficult to plan for a 2027 World Cup around two batters in their late thirties. The selectors have not answered that. They have postponed it for three more matches.

Ravindra Jadeja comes back after eight months out of the format. His last ODI was the defeat to New Zealand at Indore on 18 January, and he was left out of the England tour entirely. Around those three, the squad reads young: Ruturaj Gaikwad, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, Naman Dhir, Gurnoor Brar, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav and Auqib Nabi.

Nitish Kumar Reddy was originally picked for the Asian Games. The BCCI confirmed on Wednesday that he has been withdrawn from that squad and added to the ODI series instead, which tells you where the board thinks the more important cricket is being played.

Pant gets Srinagar, not Thiruvananthapuram

The Pant question was the loudest one going into the meeting, and the answer came in red-ball form. He will captain Rest of India in the Irani Cup against Ranji Trophy champions Jammu and Kashmir at the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar from 1 October, with Sarfaraz Khan as his vice-captain. Akash Deep is in the squad subject to a fitness clearance.

Pant has not played a white-ball international for India since Sri Lanka toured in the middle of 2024. He has kept his Test place, most recently against Sri Lanka in August. What the selectors have given him now is five days of first-class captaincy in Kashmir rather than a seat on the bench in Kerala. Whether that reads as a plan or as a holding pattern probably depends on how the Irani Cup goes.

The fixture carries a bit of history of its own. This will be the first time Srinagar has ever staged the Irani Cup, and the biggest cricket match the city has hosted in nearly four decades. Jammu and Kashmir are hosting it because they won their first Ranji Trophy in February, beating Karnataka in the final on first-innings lead.

There is a neat piece of symmetry in it too. Auqib Nabi, the 29-year-old Jammu and Kashmir seamer who took 60 wickets in that Ranji season and finished as its leading wicket-taker, will not be bowling for his state in the match. He is in India’s ODI squad.

A different fifteen for the T20Is

The T20I squad is close to the Asian Games team with a few names added, which makes sense once you look at the calendar. The Games finish on 3 October. The first T20I is in Lucknow on 6 October.

Iyer captains, Tilak Varma is his deputy, and both wicketkeepers from the Japan trip, Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson, are retained. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is in it. So are Abhishek Sharma, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh and Nitish Kumar Reddy, along with two quick bowlers from Lucknow Super Giants. Prince Yadav made his ODI debut in June. Mayank Yadav last played a T20I in Zimbabwe in July.

Jasprit Bumrah, named in the Asian Games squad, does not appear in the T20I fifteen. Three days separate the Asian Games’ conclusion in Japan from the first T20I in Lucknow, which is not much of a turnaround for a fast bowler.

The names that are not there

Hardik Pandya misses out on both squads. He has not played competitive cricket since IPL 2026 and has spent the months since rehabilitating at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru. He was named last week in an India A squad for the one-day series against Australia A in Puducherry, subject to fitness, which is the more realistic next step for him.

The selectors also confirmed what Tuesday’s scan had already suggested. Varun Chakravarthy is out of the Japan T20I and the Asian Games with a side strain, and Vipraj Nigam replaces him.

The ODIs start in Thiruvananthapuram on 27 September, move to Guwahati on 30 September and finish at New Chandigarh on 3 October, which is also the afternoon of the Asian Games gold-medal match in Japan. The T20Is run from 6 to 17 October across Lucknow, Ranchi, Indore, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

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