The Board of Control for Cricket in India named a 15-member squad for the two-Test tour of Sri Lanka on Monday morning, confirming the captaincy change most Indian cricket writers had been expecting since the England ODIs in July and adding two debutant names to a group built around the players who went to Australia in early 2025. Shubman Gill leads the side, KL Rahul is vice-captain, and the first Test begins at Galle on 15 August 2026.
Jasprit Bumrah, who was expected to headline the attack, has been ruled out because he is still recovering from a left knee injury sustained during the ODI series against England. The selectors have named Jammu & Kashmir fast bowler Auqib Nabi in his place — a 26-year-old who earns his first senior India cap on the strength of a two-season Ranji run and a recent India A tour of the same Sri Lankan venues.
Madhya Pradesh left-arm spinner Saransh Jain, 33, takes the place of Washington Sundar, who is also ruled out through injury. Jain has been a domestic-circuit regular since 2014 and was part of the India A side that played Sri Lanka A in Galle last month, where he scored 70 and took six wickets in the second unofficial Test. Sai Sudharsan, the Tamil Nadu batter who toured Zimbabwe with the India A side in mid-July, is named in the squad subject to BCCI medical clearance.
The 15-man squad, in the order the BCCI released it
Shubman Gill (c), KL Rahul (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sai Sudharsan*, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Manav Suthar, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Devdutt Padikkal, Saransh Jain, Auqib Nabi. Sai Sudharsan's name is marked with an asterisk to indicate that his participation is subject to BCCI medical clearance — the same flag the board has used in recent squads when a player is returning from a fitness lay-off.
Five of those names — Gill, Rahul, Jaiswal, Pant and Siraj — were in the side that toured Australia in early 2025. Three others — Jadeja, Kuldeep and Prasidh Krishna — were in the squad for that tour and return to the red-ball group. Dhruv Jurel keeps the second wicketkeeping slot he first held during the England Test series in January 2024. Devdutt Padikkal, who opened for India A against Sri Lanka A last month, returns to the senior set-up for the first time since the South Africa tour in late 2023.
The squad at a glance
- Top order — Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill (c), Devdutt Padikkal
- Middle order — Sai Sudharsan*, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk)
- All-rounders — Ravindra Jadeja, Saransh Jain
- Spin — Kuldeep Yadav, Manav Suthar
- Pace — Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Auqib Nabi
- Asterisk — Sai Sudharsan's participation is subject to BCCI medical clearance
- Replacement context — Auqib Nabi in for Jasprit Bumrah (left knee); Saransh Jain in for Washington Sundar
The Bumrah-shaped hole and how the selectors filled it
Bumrah picked up the knee injury during the ODI series against England in July and has been in rehabilitation since. The BCCI medical team's note on Monday stopped short of a return date but made clear that the workload of a two-Test series in Sri Lanka, where the surfaces traditionally punish fast bowlers who over-bowl in the heat, was the wrong place to risk a senior quick still in recovery. The board has not ruled Bumrah out of subsequent international fixtures, and a clearer return window is expected with the next monthly medical update.
Nabi is the eye-catching replacement. The 26-year-old from Baramulla has taken 104 first-class wickets across the past two Ranji Trophy seasons, including 60 in Jammu & Kashmir's title-winning 2025-26 campaign — a haul that included a ten-wicket match and three five-fors across the knockouts. He was part of the India A squad that toured Sri Lanka in July and took six wickets in two first-class matches on the same Galle and SSC surfaces that will host the senior fixtures, which gives the selectors a venue-specific data point they would not otherwise have for a debutant.
Gurnoor Brar, the 24-year-old Punjab quick who plays for Punjab in the Ranji Trophy and has been in the India A white-ball set-up this year, is the fourth seamer in the squad. Prasidh Krishna, who has been working his way back from a back injury that kept him out of the home season, retains his place. Siraj, the senior of the group, is the only pace bowler in the squad with 50-plus Test caps and the only one whose red-ball record at Asian venues comfortably exceeds 20 wickets per series.
The spin room: how the Galle balance is likely to read
The Galle surface has historically offered the most turn on the Sri Lankan Test calendar, and the BCCI's selection note on Monday — issued separately from the squad announcement — names Kuldeep Yadav, Manav Suthar and Ravindra Jadeja as the most likely combination for the first Test. Suthar, a 22-year-old left-arm finger-spinner from Haryana, took 36 first-class wickets across the 2025-26 Ranji season and was in the India A squad that faced Sri Lanka A at Galle last month. He is the youngest name in the squad and the one the selectors are most clearly projecting forward.
Jadeja, at 37, is the spin-room anchor. His Test record at Asian venues — the last three home series against England, New Zealand and Bangladesh — averages 28.4 with the ball and 41.6 with the bat, and he is the only frontline all-rounder in the squad. Kuldeep, who missed the England home Tests in early 2025 with a hand injury, returns to a subcontinental tour for the first time since the Bangladesh series in late 2024, where he took 15 wickets in two Tests.
Saransh Jain adds a second left-arm spin option and a lower-order batting presence. His domestic record since 2014 is the kind of steady-first-class-return that selectors usually reserve for emergencies, but the Washington Sundar injury moved him up the queue in a hurry. If the Galle surface grips more than expected, Jain could find himself in the XI ahead of either Kuldeep or Suthar, which would also allow the team to play an extra batter.
The batting order, as the selectors' note reads it
Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul are the most likely opening pair. Jaiswal's Test record since his debut against the West Indies in mid-2023 — 1,402 runs at an average just above 47 with four centuries — makes him the obvious first-choice, and Rahul's ability to anchor an innings against the new ball at Asian venues keeps him in the second slot despite a quieter run of form in the 2024-25 home season. Padikkal, who toured with India A last month, is the back-up opener and the most likely replacement if either of the first-choice pair needs to be rested.
Gill walks in at three and is the captain the selectors have chosen for the longer format. His captaincy record at India A — three series, two wins, one drawn series, a settled middle-order shape — was the deciding factor in the appointment, according to the selection note. Pant is the middle-order wicketkeeper-batter at six, with Dhruv Jurel at seven. The two spin-bowling all-rounders — Jadeja and Jain — sit at eight and nine, ahead of the four quicks.
Sai Sudharsan, if cleared, slots into the middle order at four or five, displacing the need for an extra batter in the top six. His Tamil Nadu teammate in the India A side, the all-rounder Nishant Sindhu, was not named in the squad, which is the one selection call that surprised a section of the domestic circuit. The selectors' note frames the omission as a workload decision — Sindhu had a heavy July with India A and the Tamil Nadu Ranji pre-season — rather than a form call.
The likely first-Test XI
- Openers — Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul
- Top order — Shubman Gill (c), Sai Sudharsan*
- Middle order — Rishabh Pant (wk), Dhruv Jurel
- All-rounders — Ravindra Jadeja, Saransh Jain
- Spin — Kuldeep Yadav
- Pace — Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Auqib Nabi
- Toss decision — Jadeja and Kuldeep expected to bowl first if India win the toss
The captaincy: what Gill inherits
Gill becomes the seventh player to captain India in Test cricket since 2018. He inherits a dressing room that has been rebuilt twice in the last eighteen months — once after the Australia tour and once after the England home season — and a senior group whose Test experience is, on paper, the youngest India has named for a subcontinental tour in a decade. Three players in the squad — Suthar, Padikkal and Auqib Nabi — have never played a Test match. Two more — Dhruv Jurel and Sai Sudharsan — have fewer than ten caps between them.
The senior voices in the side are Jadeja, Rahul and Siraj. Jadeja is the senior-most player by caps; Siraj, who has 47 Test wickets in his last 15 matches across both Asian and away venues, is the senior-most fast bowler. Pant, who has been vice-captain on a recent white-ball tour, is named in the squad as a specialist batter and wicketkeeper rather than as a leadership candidate, which leaves the vice-captaincy concentrated with Rahul.
The Men's Selection Committee, chaired by Ajit Agarkar, announced the squad after a meeting in Mumbai that ran into Monday morning. The note from the meeting names five selection priorities — pace-bowling workload management across two Tests, left-arm spin balance at Galle, middle-order continuity, captaincy experience, and venue-specific India A data — and the squad, read against those priorities, is a coherent fit. The two changes forced by injury (Bumrah, Sundar) become the two debutant-shaped opportunities (Nabi, Jain), and the spin room is built around three left-arm options for a venue that rewards turn.
The fixture window and what comes next
The first Test begins at the Galle International Cricket Stadium on 15 August 2026 and runs through 19 August, with a rest day in the middle three days. India fly to Colombo on 20 August for a two-day gap before the second Test at the Singhalese Sports Club, which runs from 23 August to 27 August. The squad is expected to depart for Sri Lanka in two batches — the first on 11 August, the second on 13 August — with the players who were not on the India A tour in July joining the latter group.
The selection committee's next meeting is scheduled for the week after the second Test, where the squad for the subsequent home series — India play West Indies in two Tests in October — will be finalised. The medical updates for both Bumrah and Sundar are expected to be released before that meeting. Fantasy-platform reaction to the squad has been muted so far; Galle is not a venue where most fantasy contests carry a heavy weight, and the debutant names do not yet carry a usable fantasy price on most Indian platforms.
For the fantasy desk, the practical next step is to update the credit-tables of any contest or guide that priced Bumrah as a locked-in Test pacer, to mark Auqib Nabi as a debutant option without a usable fantasy price for the first match, and to flag Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja as the captain-or-vice candidates most likely to swing the multiplier on a turning Galle surface. Broader squad reading and fantasy captaincy briefs continue to live at IPL Today Fantasy, where the live match reporting resumes when the first Test begins on 15 August.
