Shreyas Iyer named India’s new T20I captain as Suryakumar Yadav is dropped
The selectors have ended the captaincy guessing game. Shreyas Iyer takes over India’s T20I side for the Ireland and England tours, Suryakumar Yadav misses out completely, and 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi earns a maiden call-up.
Jun 6, 2026
India have a new man in charge of their shortest format. Shreyas Iyer was named T20I captain on Saturday for the upcoming tours of Ireland and England, with Suryakumar Yadav left out of the squad altogether just months after lifting the T20 World Cup in March. Chief selector Ajit Agarkar confirmed the call at a press conference in Mumbai, alongside BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, and it doubled as the resolution of a captaincy question that had been hanging over the team for weeks.
A captaincy that finally changed hands
Suryakumar led India to the title in March, so dropping him reads as a hard call rather than an obvious one. The selectors leaned on form. His returns with the bat had thinned out across the season, and the panel decided the captaincy and his place in the side could no longer be carried on reputation alone. Iyer, by contrast, arrives off the back of an IPL campaign that put him front and centre, having taken Punjab Kings deep into the season with the kind of calm chases that build a leadership case on their own.
The move also closes the door on a story that kept shifting. Sanju Samson had been floated as the front-runner at one point, and reports linking Iyer to the job were knocked down as recently as last month. Saturday settled it. Tilak Varma was handed the vice-captaincy, keeping a left-hander in the top order and giving the side a deputy who has grown into international cricket quickly.
Sooryavanshi gets the call at 15
The headline alongside Iyer’s appointment belongs to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The 15-year-old earned a maiden India call-up after an IPL 2026 season that selectors could not look past. He piled up 776 runs for Rajasthan Royals at a strike rate north of 237, clearing the ropes 72 times along the way, numbers that turned a teenager being managed as an impact player into a genuine selection argument. Whether he goes straight into the XI is another matter, but the call-up itself says plenty about how quickly his case has moved.
Jasprit Bumrah was rested for both T20I series as India keep managing his workload through a packed calendar. That leaves Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj and Harshit Rana to share the new ball, with Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Axar Patel and Washington Sundar offering a deep spin and all-round pool.
The full squad
The 16-man group reads: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Tilak Varma (vice-captain), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammed Siraj, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh and Prince Yadav. The same leadership group carries through to the Asian Games later in the year.
Suryakumar, for his part, took the news without rancour. He wished the squad well as a “highly skilled group” and pointed out that India’s last three T20I captains, Rohit Sharma included, have all come out of Mumbai. Rohit was among those to congratulate Iyer publicly. It is a clean handover on the surface, even if the cricket reasons behind it were anything but soft.