India have entered a new chapter in T20 International cricket due to the recent announcement regarding their white-ball tour of Ireland and England as they named Shreyas Iyer new captain for the team. Shreyas, who is replacing Suryakumar Yadav, has been excluded from the squad despite leading India to successful T20 World Cup title defence earlier this year as captain.

Tilak Varma has been named vice-captain with the selectors making some major changes in leadership after the end of an era before a new T20 World Cup cycle and next Los Angeles Olympics 2028.

The selection of 15-year-old powerhouse Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is one of the chief talking points from the squad announcement. He was awarded a senior India call-up after an exceptional IPL 2026 season where he scored 776 runs with a strike rate of 237.30 Sooryavanshi will be the youngest player to play for India in men’s international cricket if he gets his debut during the tour.

Also back in the squad are Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravi Bishnoi and Prince Yadav, while Rinku Singh and Kuldeep Yadav have been left out. Senior players Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah have been rested from the series.

“But the thing was even that in terms of T20, we thought Shreyas was probably the best option to lead the side at this stage, because he has experience as a captain (at franchise level),” chief selector Ajit Agarkar said on Monday. The 31-year-old has previously taken Kolkata Knight Riders to an IPL title and led a number of teams to tournament finals. He also backed up his claims by having two of the best IPL seasons as a batsman in the past two years.

Agarkar further dissected Tilak’s promotion to vice-captain with consistent T20I performances.

On the other hand, India start their tour with a couple of T20Is versus Ireland at Belfast on June 26 and 28 before moving to England where they will lock horns in a five-match T20I series starting July 1.

Wicketkeeper-batter Dhruv Jurel will also lead India A through a multi-format series in Sri Lanka, which contains a number of boosts to domestic and world-class abilities.

India’s T20I Squad for Ireland and England Series 2026

Shreyas Iyer (capt), Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma (vice-capt), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Mohammed Siraj, Ravi Bishnoi, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Prince Yadav, Axar Patel, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi

Team India A four-day squad for Sri Lanka

Dhruv Jurel (capt & wk), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sai Sudharsan, Devdutt Padikkal (vice-capt), Harsh Dubey, Saransh Jain, Gurnoor Brar, Auqib Nabi, Yash Thakur, Ayush Pandey, Anshul Kamboj, N Jagadeesan (wk), Zeeshan Ansari, Aman Mokhade, Shaik Rasheed