No SKY, no Gill: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi headlines India’s likely Asian Games

Current Indian T20 captain Suryakumar Yadav along with Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill are two prominent names missing, while teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has been named in the 30-man long list of men’s probables submitted by the BCCI to the IOA for the Asian Games in Aichi-19. October

It was pre-decided that the BCCI would have to select two separate T20 teams as India’s home white-ball series against the West Indies partially overlapped with the four-year extravaganza.

The West Indies series includes eight white-ball matches – three ODIs and five T20Is – between 27 September and 17 October. As Gill is expected to lead the team in ODIs, he was not selected for the Asian Games.

While some players are regulars in both ODIs and T20Is, the Asian Games men’s cricket tournament will be held between September 24 and October 3, forcing the selectors to create a bigger pool to pick the two teams.

It is clear that Suryakumar is no longer part of the bigger scheme of things when it comes to the 2028 Olympics and the next T20 World Cup, and his name not appearing in the Asian Games longlist is pointless.

Candidates for captaincy in this Asian Games list would be Shreyas Iyer, Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma.

Jasprit Bumrah’s name is on the bowler list, though ODIs might be his priority at that point, considering the 2027 World Cup.

Harshit Rana is expected to be fit by then and has been long listed along with Prasidh Krishna and Arshdeep Singh.

Among the spinners, leading slow bowlers Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar and Harsh Dubey have made the list, but only two of the four are expected to be selected. The other two will play the Windies series.

Surprisingly, the only prominent underperformer to make the list is gold medal winning captain from the Hangzhou edition—Ruturaj Gaikwad.

Longlist to IOA: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Praid Singh, N Kuldeep Praid Singh Krishna, Varun Chakravarthy, Anukul Roy, Ayush Badoni, Harsh Dubey, Dhruv Jurel. Khaleel Ahmed, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravi Bishnoi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Shivam Dube, Vipraj Nigam Nigam, Harshit Rana, Yash Thakur, Washington Sundar.

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Issued by:

Saurabh Kumar

Published on:

30 May 2026 16:10 IST