Veteran India seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar on Tuesday returned to the national side nearly four years since his last appearance for the upcoming five-match T20I series, to be played in New Zealand later this month. Notably, this is the first squad announced by BCCI after Ajit Agarkar’s exit.
Pragyan Ojha is the interim chairman of selectors. Along with Bhuvneshwar, Varun Chakravarthy is also making a comeback after an injury had ruled him out of the Asian Games 2026.
India will play five T20Is from October 22 to November 1 in New Zealand. The first match of the series is at Christchurch on October 22, followed by second on October 22 at the same venue.
The third T20I, on October 27, will be played at Wellington while the fourth and fifth T20Is will be on October 30 and November 1 at Auckland and Hamilton respectively. India will also play a five-match ODI series and two-Test series after the T20I affair.
India’s T20I squad: Shreyas Iyer (C), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan (wk), Tilak Varma (vc), Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Naman Dhir, Prince Yadav, Mayank Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav.
India A squad: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Devdutt Padikkal, Ravichandran Smaran, Rishabh Pant* [WK], Dhruv Jurel [C] [WK], Washington Sundar, Auqib Nabi, Akash Deep, Anshul Kamboj, Manav Suthar, Mukesh Choudhary, Sai Sudarsan, Yash Rathod, Mukesh Kumar
