In a bold move, the Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel decided to drop Suryakumar Yadav, who recently led India to T20 World Cup glory, for the UK tour, where India would play two T20Is against Ireland and five T20Is against England. 

SKY wasn’t in the best of forms in the last 18 months and it led to his exclusion. Shreyas Iyer, who has impressed with his leadership, has been handed over the captaincy baton in the shortest format. 

Iyer led Kolkata Knight Riders to IPL 2024 glory, whereas he led Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings to the final of the lucrative tournament in 2020 and 2025 season respectively. 

Rajasthan Royals’ prodigy opener Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has been given his maiden T20I call-up. The 15-year-old batter had a stellar season in IPL 2026, top-scoring in the tournament with 776 runs in 16 games at a blistering strike rate of 232.37.

Prince Yadav, who received his maiden ODI call-up recently, has been backed by the selectors for the first time in T20Is. Harshit Rana will make a comeback after recovering from a knee injury, which forced him to miss the recently conluded IPL for KKR.

Ravi Bishnoi has been chosen over Kuldeep Yadav whereas Hardik Pandya, who is on his road to recovery and has been included for the ODIs against Afghanistan, has been left out of the T20 squads in favour of Nitish Kumar Reddy.

India will jet off to Ireland to play a couple of T20Is in Belfast – on June 26 and 28. From there, Iyer’s team will travel to England to play five T20Is. The series opener will be played on July 1 in Chester-le-Street with the final match scheduled in Southampton on July 11.

Squads for Ireland and England series: Shreyas Iyer (C), Tilak Varma (VC), Ravi Bishnoi, Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Sanju Samson, Axar Patel, Harshit Rana, Ishan Kishan, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, Shivam Dube, Varun Chakaravarthy, Prince Yadav, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi