look news india
The biggest and shocking news of this time is coming out from the camp of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Team India. Captain Suryakumar Yadav, who gave India the historic title of 2026 T20 World Cup, has been stripped of his captaincy and the Indian T20 team is going to get its new captain in the form of Shreyas Iyer. However, just before the official announcement of this big decision, the inside story of the huge tussle between Team India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir and the selection committee regarding the name of the captain has come to light. It has been learned that head coach Gautam Gambhir wanted wicketkeeper batsman Sanju Samson to be India’s next T20 captain and not Shreyas Iyer, but his insistence did not work in front of BCCI and selectors.
Why was Gautam Gambhir adamant on Sanju Samson’s name, why did the selectors refuse?
According to a report in a reputed national newspaper, head coach Gautam Gambhir was a fan of Sanju Samson’s aggressive style and game plan for the T20 format and was in favor of handing over the captaincy to him from the very beginning. However, some senior members of the selection committee led by Ajit Agarkar were not completely convinced with this choice. The selectors believed that there was a lack of consistency in Sanju Samson’s game and performance, whereas the team needed a stable player for a very important and responsible post like captaincy. Although Sanju Samson played some useful and match-winning innings in the last three matches of the recently concluded T20 World Cup, a large section of the selectors were not ready to see him as a long-term captain and believed that it would be too early to take such a big decision on the basis of just a few good innings.
There was a middle path between Ajit Agarkar and Gambhir, Tilak Verma got a big responsibility
When Gautam Gambhir was adamant on Sanju Samson’s name in the captain’s race, on the other hand BCCI and chief selector Ajit Agarkar were strongly against this decision. After a long strategic meeting, a consensus was finally reached between the BCCI, the Chief Selector and the Head Coach. Under this new formula, everyone gave their approval to appoint Shreyas Iyer as the new captain of the Indian T20 team and make young sensation Tilak Verma the new vice-captain of the team. Team India will now make new preparations for the next T20 World Cup under the captaincy of Shreyas Iyer from the upcoming Ireland and England tour.
This is how the surprise entry of Iyer, who was out of the T20 team for almost 3 years, happened.
Shreyas Iyer becoming the new captain is surprising everyone because he played his last T20 International match for the Indian team in the year 2023. He was neither a part of the T20 World Cup winning team of 2024 nor 2026. But despite being away from the international level, the sting of his captaincy continued to ring in domestic cricket and IPL. In the year 2024, he made Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) the champion under his captaincy, and the interesting thing is that Gautam Gambhir was the mentor of KKR at that time. After this, in the year 2025, under his captaincy, the Punjab Kings team reached the finals, where they had to face defeat at the hands of RCB.
Strong performance in IPL 2026 made Shreyas Iyer the number 1 contender
The start of the IPL 2026 season was also very good for Punjab under the captaincy of Iyer, where the team won 6 out of its first 7 matches, however, due to losing 6 consecutive matches, the team was out of the race for the playoffs. But along with captaincy, Shreyas Iyer’s performance with the bat in IPL 2026 was excellent. He scored a total of 498 runs in 14 matches of the season with an unmatched average of 55.33 and a stormy strike rate of 168.81, which included 5 brilliant half-centuries and 1 explosive century. It was this explosive form with the bat that most compelled the selectors to make him captain. Shreyas Iyer will not only captain the team in the upcoming T20 series, but will also be seen handling the responsibility of batting at the number-4 position in place of Suryakumar Yadav in the team.
