Former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathanhas commented on the exclusions of Jitesh Sharma and Shubman Gill from the India's T20 World Cup 2026 squad, which was announced on December 20 at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai.
Irfan emphasised that Jitesh might feel hard done for after being left out despite giving his all in the past few matches. The erstwhile all-rounder also highlighted Jitesh's contributions in Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) run to the title in IPL 2025.
"Today, how do you think Jitesh
Sharma will be feeling? He’s definitely going to feel really bad. The strike rate is good. Sure, the sample size isn't very big. The average is decent too. The keeping was really good too. In one match, he took three really good catches upfront and the keeping was excellent. There were very few mistakes overall. We were also using the DRS really well. He performed really well in the IPL for RCB too. He must be feeling quite dejected," shared Irfan in a video on his YouTube channel.
As for ex-vice-captain Gill, Irfan pointed that the management's plan to integrate Gill in the 20-over setup did not pan out as they would have intended to. The renowned commentator mentioned the decision as a tad bit unfair for Gill.
"It's not working out now. The thing with this team is that the selectors initially thought, 'Let's bring Shubman Gill in with a plan. Abhishek Sharma will give us aggressive batting and Shubman Gill will provide stability'. They brought Shubman Gill in with that strategy and straightaway made him the vice-captain. The World Cup is just around the corner, it's right at the doorstep. But then you took a U-turn because you felt this isn’t working out. There has been some unfairness, now you have done a U-turn here too, right?," he added.
Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan were picked ahead of Jitesh for the marquee event which will be held in India and Sri Lanka next year. Axar Patel was named India's T20I vice-captain after Gill was not picked. Gill failed to fire in general while considering his T20I stats in the matches which India played in 2025.
He was only able to register 291 runs in 15 T20Is in 2025 at a poor average of 24.25. Interestingly, the top-order batter was not able to score a single half-century in the 15 innings. Despite his underwhelming form, Gill's exclusion in particular came as a big surprise.
