Who will be the next Indian cricket team T20 captain? That will be a big question which will dominate Indian cricket over the next few days.
Sources told NDTV on Wednesday that Suryakumar Yadav will most likely lose his captaincy. His position in the team will also be discussed when the BCCI selectors next meet. India are the reigning champions of the T20 World Cup. Whoever is the next captain will be expected to carry on the mantle till the next edition of the marquee event in 2028.
A report in PTI said that Punjab Kings’ Shreyas Iyer and Mumbai Indians’ Tilak Varma are the front-runners for the captaincy job. The report added that Sanju Samson is Gambhir’s choice as captain. It also added an interesting aspect about the Gambhir-Shreyas equation.
“It is understood that Gambhir has certain reservations about Shreyas, who was the captain of KKR in 2024, when the current India head coach was a mentor,” the report stated.
“At the time, Shreyas had publicly spoken about being underappreciated, something that didn’t go unnoticed. It’s no secret that Gambhir’s choice is Sanju Samson, who had a wonderful knockout phase during the T20 World Cup, but the selectors aren’t convinced that either the Kerala batter or Ishan Kishan could be consistent for a prolonged period of time.”
Suryakumar was handed India men’s T20I captaincy after veteran right-handed opener Rohit Sharma retired from the format post the T20 World Cup win in the West Indies in 2024.
India’s next T20I assignment is a two-game tour of Ireland, to be played on June 26 and 28. It is understood that the squad selection for the same can happen sometime in mid-June. After this, India will play a five-match T20I series in England, before going on a three-game tour of Zimbabwe.
Yadav managed only 270 runs in 13 innings for the Mumbai Indians in IPL 2026, while averaging 20.76, as the five-time champions finished at ninth spot on the points table. He also struggled with the bat during the victorious T20 World Cup campaign and didn’t get a good score in a recent game for Triumph Knights Mumbai North East in the ongoing Mumbai T20 League.