Yastika Bhatia missed India’s Asia Cup squad, and now she is India A captain
The selectors have handed Yastika Bhatia the India A captaincy for the 50-over and four-day legs of next month’s Australia A tour, with Anushka Sharma in charge of the T20s.
Aug 28, 2026
Yastika Bhatia was not in the squad India named for the Women’s Asia Cup. Three and a half weeks later she has a captaincy. The selectors have put her in charge of India A for both the one-day and the four-day fixtures against Australia A next month, with Anushka Sharma leading the T20 side.
Three squads, two captains
The tour is a multi-format one, so the selectors picked three separate squads of 15 rather than one travelling party. Anushka Sharma captains the T20 group with the seam-bowling allrounder Sayali Satghare as her deputy. For the 50-over games and the four-day match, Bhatia takes over as captain and keeps wicket, and Anushka drops back to vice-captain.
Splitting the job that way is not unusual on an A tour. It gives the selectors two players to look at in a leadership role over three weeks rather than one, and it keeps a specialist keeper in charge of the red-ball side without asking her to run the T20s as well.
What Bhatia is coming back from
Bhatia’s route here has been long. Her left knee gave way at a preparation camp in Visakhapatnam in September 2025, the diagnosis was a torn anterior cruciate ligament, and she had surgery on it that September. The injury cost her the home ODI World Cup. She was still short of full fitness when WPL 2026 came round and was ruled out of that too, which is the better part of a year gone at 25.
She got back into an India shirt for the T20 World Cup in England this year. Then came the Asia Cup squad, and she was not in it. The selectors went with Richa Ghosh and the 18-year-old G Kamalini as their two wicketkeeping options, a call about the shape of a T20 squad more than a verdict on Bhatia. An A captaincy in September is the obvious way to keep her playing and keep her visible, and there is a straight line from a good month against Australia A to the next senior squad.
Anushka Sharma keeps a job she has already done
Anushka is not new to this. She led India A to a 2-1 T20 series win over England A in June on the UK tour, having made her senior international debut on India’s tour of South Africa, and the selectors have handed her the same brief at home. Harleen Deol, who captained the one-day side on that England trip, is not in any of the three squads this time.
Who is in, who is out
Amandeep Kaur gets her first India A call-up. The 23-year-old is a left-arm wristspinning allrounder and she is in the one-day squad only, which is a rare skill set in Indian domestic cricket and exactly the sort of selection an A tour exists to make. Akshita Bhagat, a seamer, is in both the one-day and four-day groups.
Along with Deol, the names left out from the England tour party include G Kamalini, who is away with the senior side, plus Pratika Rawal, Purvaja Verlekar, Saima Thakor and Deeya Yadav.
The T20 squad reads: Anushka Sharma (captain), Sayali Satghare (vice-captain), Vrinda Dinesh, Sujata Dey, Tejal Hasabnis, Nikki Prasad, Shipra Giri, Shweta Sehrawat, Uma Chetry, Tanuja Kanwer, Minnu Mani, Vaishnavi Sharma, Jintimani Kalita, Shabnam Shakeel and Simran Dil Bahadur.
The one-day squad is Yastika Bhatia (captain), Anushka Sharma (vice-captain), Vrinda Dinesh, Priya Punia, Tanisha Singh, Tejal Hasabnis, Nikki Prasad, Uma Chetry, Minnu Mani, Amandeep Kaur, Vaishnavi Sharma, Sayali Satghare, Jintimani Kalita, Shabnam Shakeel and Akshita Bhagat.
For the four-day match the selectors bring in Shubha Satheesh, Mamata Madiwala, Sushree Dibyadarshini and Shuchi Upadhyay.
Where it is being played
The three T20s are at New Chandigarh on 12, 15 and 17 September. The 50-over games move to the PCA Stadium in Mohali on 20, 23 and 25 September. The four-day match closes the tour in Dharamshala from 29 September to 2 October, a late-September Himachal posting that should give the seamers something.
Australia A named their squads earlier this month, and the headline there was Tayla Vlaeminck being picked for the white-ball leg two years after she dislocated her shoulder in the opening over of a T20 World Cup campaign. Darcie Brown is in the same group. Neither is down for the four-day match, so Bhatia’s red-ball side will face a different Australian attack to the one her one-day team gets.