BCCI confirmed on 23 June 2026 a 15-player India squad for the two-match T20I tour of Belfast, with Shreyas Iyer replacing Suryakumar Yadav as captain, Tilak Varma stepping up as vice-captain, and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in line for a senior debut after his 776-run IPL 2026.
The BCCI selection committee, chaired by Ajit Agarkar, named India's squad for the two-match T20I tour of Ireland on 23 June 2026, just three days before the first ball is due to be bowled at Belfast. The fixtures sit on 26 and 28 June, framed by the board as the earliest possible groundwork for the next T20 World Cup cycle and as a chance to test combinations against an Associate side whose own white-ball structure has tightened considerably since the last time India visited these shores.
The headline changes are three. Shreyas Iyer takes the T20I captaincy from Suryakumar Yadav, who has been dropped from the T20I set-up after a run of low-impact innings through the back end of IPL 2026. Tilak Varma, who has been with the squad since the South Africa series earlier in the year, is elevated to vice-captain in place of Axar Patel, with the framing around a two-year cycle that gives the next group of leaders proper game time before the next global event. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the 17-year-old left-hander who lit up IPL 2026 with 776 runs and the Orange Cap, is added to a senior India squad for the first time.
Agarkar framed the captaincy call around Iyer's leadership record at franchise level rather than his most recent international numbers, which makes sense on a closer look. Iyer has captained Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, led Punjab Kings in the league stage of IPL 2026, and carried the middle-order batting weight that India have spent two years trying to redistribute. The Surrey stint and the County Championship runs that followed gave the selectors a read on his temperament in English conditions that, in turn, maps neatly onto what Ireland will offer in late June.
For Suryakumar Yadav, the omission is the more consequential piece of the announcement. He retained the T20I captaincy through the South Africa series at the start of the year on the strength of his 2024 T20 World Cup-winning form, but the numbers through the second half of IPL 2026 did not recover enough to make his case airtight. The selectors have, in effect, drawn a line under a transitional window and chosen to invest the next two years in a group of players who will all still be in their prime by the time the next World Cup cycle peaks.
Tilak Varma's elevation to vice-captain is the part of the announcement most likely to be misread. He has not been India's first-choice number four for long, and his IPL 2026 numbers, while consistent, were not headline-grabbing in the way that would normally precede a vice-captaincy. The logic, as the selectors framed it, is two-fold. First, the two-year cycle argument: if India are committing to Iyer as captain, the next most senior voice in the middle order has to be in the side regularly enough to learn the job in match conditions rather than only on the field. Second, the left-handed middle-order balance: with Axar Patel, Shivam Dube and now Sooryavanshi all offering left-hand options through the line-up, Tilak becomes the right-handed counterweight that the batting order has otherwise been missing.
What Tilak Varma does with the vice-captaincy over the next 18 months will be the more interesting story. The role has been treated by India as something closer to a development position than a formal second-in-command, and players who have held it in the last cycle have tended to drift out of it once a younger option has established himself. The selectors are betting on him staying ahead of the next wave, and the Belfast tour is the first proper test of that.
The most-watched name on the sheet, and the one fantasy cricket players will already be pricing into their squads, is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The teenager's 776 runs in IPL 2026 — the season's leading aggregate and the Orange Cap — were enough on their own to make a selection case, but the selectors have been careful to point out that this is a longer-term developmental call than a single-tournament reaction. He has been tracked through India A fixtures across the past 12 months and has the left-handed top-order profile that the side has been looking to bed in alongside the more established names.
Whether he plays both T20Is in Belfast, or is held back for the longer-format A tours that follow, will tell you how seriously the management is treating his first senior tour. The likeliest scenario is that he features in at least one of the two games, with the second potentially used as a rotation window to give the rest of the squad a longer look. Either way, his senior cap, when it comes, will be the youngest India T20I debut since the post-2022 T20 World Cup reset.
The one change forced on the selectors before the squad was even named was the loss of Nitish Kumar Reddy to a left quadricep strain, ruled out on the same day as the announcement. Reddy had been pencilled in as the seam-bowling all-rounder option through the middle overs. His replacement is Suryansh Shedge, who will travel with the squad and continue rehabilitation at the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru rather than being available for selection in Belfast. The change is small in headline terms but worth noting in fantasy contexts: Reddy had been a popular differential pick in IPL 2026 fantasy contests, and his absence removes a bowler who was likely to have featured in the powerplay and at the death.
The squad announced on 23 June reads as follows: Shreyas Iyer (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma (vc), Suryansh Shedge, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Prasidh Krishna, Arshdeep Singh, Prince Yadav and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. It is a side built around the left-handed middle order that has been India's preferred T20I shape since the last World Cup, with Washington Sundar and Varun Chakravarthy giving the side two frontline spin options and Arshdeep Singh and Prasidh Krishna the new-ball seam pairing that has been the most consistent across the last 18 months.
Prince Yadav's inclusion as the third seamer is the one selection that signals depth rather than first-choice intent. He has been part of the India A set-up through the English off-season and is likely to be used as a conditional third seamer if the surfaces in Belfast offer enough lateral movement to justify an extra pace option. The likeliest XI on 26 June, if India opt to play the extra batter, drops one of the three seamers and pushes Washington Sundar up the order as a fourth bowling option. If they prefer to chase on what is expected to be a slower, lower surface, the bowling group stays intact and Sooryavanshi slots in at the top.
The Stormont ground in Belfast tends to offer something between a slow English county surface and a subcontinental turner in late June. The square boundaries are short enough that six-hitting through the line remains the most efficient scoring route, and the average first-innings score across the last few T20Is played there has settled around 165 to 175. Ireland's white-ball side has improved markedly since 2024, with a clearer seam-bowling structure and a left-arm spin option in the middle overs that has troubled more experienced batting groups.
The two fixtures, on 26 and 28 June, are the first senior India matches played in Ireland since the 2018 series and will be the first proper assessment of how the new captaincy group handles a venue where the touring side is the heavy favourite but where the conditions narrow the margin between a controlled performance and an awkward chase. For fantasy cricket players, the tour is also the first test of how India's new middle-order shape maps onto contest scoring in Associate-away conditions, which has historically been a tougher scoring environment than the headline IPL numbers suggest.
For anyone building fantasy teams around the India T20I side, the squad announcement reshapes a few pricing decisions at the top of the order. Shreyas Iyer's captaincy adds a small bonus in contests that weight captaincy-specific scoring, and the promotion of Tilak Varma to vice-captain is the more interesting differential call. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's selection is the first time he has been available on the senior fantasy cricket platforms, and his opening-order role, if he plays, will make him one of the higher-variance captain picks of the summer.
The bowling group is more settled. Arshdeep Singh's death-over role is unchanged, Prasidh Krishna's new-ball work is well documented, and Varun Chakravarthy remains the side's primary wicket-taking spin option through the middle overs. Washington Sundar's role as the fourth bowler gives fantasy players an alternative if the surface offers less turn than expected, and Axar Patel's dual value with bat and ball remains intact.
For broader coverage of squad changes, captaincy moves and tour announcements, the cricket news section tracks every BCCI selection through the summer.
Track squad selections, captain picks and points across the Ireland tour and beyond.