India’s final T20I in the home series against New Zealand is on January 31. Their opening game at the 2026 T20 World Cup is on February 7. The turnaround time is less than a week and as India approach their final home series of the season, against the Kiwis, the biggest issue would be the fitness and workload management of the players.
The World Cup squad has been picked and in a country that revels in the embarrassment of cricketing riches, there are adequate replacements for almost every position if by chance someone picks up an injury. Just two players are irreplaceable and their workload needs to be handled carefully. Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya are the two most vital cogs in India’s World Cup wheel and must be handled with care. Given their injury record, it would be a prudent call to rest them for the three-match ODI series against New Zealand that precedes the five T20Is. It is learnt that the selectors are thinking along the lines of that as the ODI squad is expected to be announced on January 3 or 4.
On the face of it, besides the Ro-Ko mania, the ODI series offers nothing. Yes, Shubham Gill would return to lead the side and Shreyas Iyer is hopeful of making it subject to the clearance from the BCCI’s medical team at the Centre of Excellence and how the Vijay Hazare Trophy matches go, fitness-wise, that he has to play. As RevSportz already reported, Ishan Kishan is on the selectors’ radar and Rishabh Pant appears to be on a slippery slope. But 50-over cricket is not on the Indian team’s agenda at this moment and rightly so. The focus will shift to that format next season.
Bumrah in any case hasn’t been part of the ODI squad for a couple of years now, his last 50-over fixture being the 2023 World Cup final against Australia. He is the only player to be exempted from playing in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy. The BCCI and the selection committee know that they can’t overload India’s most valuable player with uninterrupted game time. The fast bowler trained with the Gujarat team on Monday and the T20I series against the Kiwis will set him up nicely for the ICC showpiece.
Pandya’s last 50-over game was the Champions Trophy final on March 9. Terribly unlucky with the injuries throughout his career, the latest setback came at the Asia Cup in September, a left quadriceps injury, which ruled him out of the white-ball tour of Australia followed by the home ODIs against South Africa. The all-rounder returned for the T20Is against the Proteas, and a 59 not out off 28 balls on his comeback at Cuttack showed that he was never undercooked. India’s T20 World Cup plans could be derailed if Pandya breaks down again, a la the 2023 World Cup, where the hosts badly missed him in the final when KL Rahul got stuck.
Pandya is expected to play a couple of Vijay Hazare Trophy matches for Baroda in January, which is in accordance with the BCCI’s directive to the centrally contracted cricketers to participate in domestic cricket. But burning through his playing time in an inconsequential ODI series, with a World Cup around the corner, might defy logic. The selectors are rightly unwilling.
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