Hardik Pandya misses India's West Indies squads as Rishabh Pant takes the Irani Cup captaincy

India's selectors have left Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant out of both white-ball squads for the West Indies tour, with Pant instead given the Rest of India captaincy for the Irani Cup

The BCCI named 15-man ODI and T20I squads on Wednesday for the West Indies' visit, a tour that opens with three one-day internationals from 27 September and closes with five T20Is running to 17 October. The Rest of India side for the Irani Cup was announced the same day.

Shubman Gill captains the one-day side with KL Rahul as his vice-captain, and Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are both named. Shreyas Iyer leads the T20I squad, with Tilak Varma deputising.

Neither list carries Hardik Pandya, who has not played competitive cricket since IPL 2026, nor Rishabh Pant, who has missed a further round of white-ball selection.

The ten-over benchmark Pandya has not met

Hardik Pandya had been the most widely expected recall of the meeting, and the reasoning against him is a bowling workload rather than a batting one.

Reports around the announcement say he is cleared for no more than six overs a match at present, and that the panel will not restore him to the senior one-day side until he can deliver a full ten-over spell and field for fifty.

He has instead been placed on a phased return through India A's one-day matches against Australia A, which leaves the seam-bowling all-round place open rather than filled.

Pant goes to Srinagar instead

Rishabh Pant will captain Rest of India against Ranji Trophy champions Jammu and Kashmir at the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar from 1 to 5 October, with Sarfaraz Khan as his vice-captain.

It is a red-ball assignment for a player whose case for an India recall has rested on white-ball runs, and it falls in the same week as the one-day series he was not picked for.

Akash Deep is named in the Rest of India squad subject to fitness clearance, having been recovering from a lower-back problem.

Rohit and Kohli in a reshaped one-day squad

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have both retired from Test and T20 international cricket, and the fifty-over side is now the only format in which they are available to India.

Ravindra Jadeja returns to the one-day squad, having last played the format in the New Zealand series in January.

Jasprit Bumrah is unavailable for the one-dayers because the Asian Games in Japan overlap with them, while Mayank Yadav comes back into the T20I squad alongside Arshdeep Singh and Prince Yadav.

Two maiden call-ups

Naman Dhir and Auqib Nabi have been handed their first India one-day call-ups, and neither has played international cricket.

Nabi is the Jammu and Kashmir seamer who travelled with India's Test squad to Sri Lanka in August without making his debut, and whose state won the Ranji Trophy last season.

Dhir, a batting all-rounder, had been picked for India A's one-day matches against Australia A before the senior call came.

The Asian Games squad changes too

The same announcement confirmed that Varun Chakravarthy's side strain has ruled him out of the Asian Games and the one-off T20I against Japan, a fortnight after it cut short his comeback series against Afghanistan.

Vipraj Nigam, the Delhi Capitals leg-spinner, replaces him in both squads and would be in line for a first India cap.

Nitish Kumar Reddy has been withdrawn from the Asian Games party and named in both West Indies squads instead.

India open the one-day series against West Indies in Thiruvananthapuram on 27 September, three days after the men's cricket tournament at the Asian Games begins in Japan.

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