India won kabaddi gold in Japan, and none of the 12 are in their Commonwealth Championship probables
Pawan Sehrawat, Sunil Kumar and the rest of the Asian Games squad are missing from AKFI’s 17-man camp list for the first Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship in Ahmedabad.
Oct 9, 2026
India beat Iran 40-34 in the Asian Games final in Japan on 26 September to keep the men’s kabaddi gold. Less than two weeks later the Amateur Kabaddi Federation of India named 17 probables for a camp ahead of the first Commonwealth Kabaddi Championship, and not one of those 12 gold medallists is on the list.
That means no Sunil Kumar, who captained the side in Japan, no Pawan Sehrawat, his vice-captain, and no Arjun Deshwal or Aslam Inamdar. The championship is in Ahmedabad from 21 to 31 October, with 14 Commonwealth nations taking part, and India are the hosts.
Who is in
Nine of the 17 are raiders or all-rounders: Naveen Kumar, Pankaj Mohite, Sachin Tanwar, Rakesh Sungroya, Aditya Shinde, Ajit Chauhan, Shivam Patare, Neeraj Narwal and Bharat Hooda.
The other eight are defenders: Yogesh Dahiya, Shubham Shinde, Surjeet Singh, Deepak Rathee, Deepak Sankar, Nitesh Kumar, Parvesh Bhainswal and Ajit Pawar. Naveen, Surjeet, Shubham, Yogesh, Aditya and Parvesh were all left out of the Asian Games squad in August, so for them this is a way back into India colours. The final squad will be picked from these 17 after the camp.
Rest, or a second team?
The federation has not said why the Asian Games group was left out. The obvious reading is rest. Iran, who India beat in the final, and Chinese Taipei are not Commonwealth members, so this is a tournament India should win without their first-choice side.
The omissions go beyond the 12, though. Khel Now counted 20 well-known names missing, and eight of them were not at the Asian Games either, among them Navdeep Duhan, Saurabh Nandal and Vijay Malik. That makes this look less like a rest and more like a deliberate look at the next layer of players.
I think that is the right call for a first edition at home. India will be heavy favourites whoever they pick, and a tournament they are expected to win is a good one to find out which of these 17 can handle the pressure of an India shirt. It would be a different matter if Iran were coming.
Who else is coming
Australia have launched their squad for the event, and Tanzania’s federation went looking for players to make up theirs. Every visitor will face a host team that has just left out an entire Asian Games-winning squad and still starts as favourite.