Former cricketer-turned-commentator Aakash Chopra has expressed disappointment over Yashasvi Jaiswal’s non-selection in India’s T20 World Cup 2026 squad.

Chopra also reminded that the left-handed opener was part of the T20 World Cup-winning Indian team in 2024. However, later Shubman Gill returned to the T20I fold as vice-captain and became a regular opener.

However, with underperforming Shubman being shown the exit door for the showpiece event starting on February 7, Chopra opined that Jaiswal should have been the first name that had to return to the side logically.

“The way Yashasvi plays, logically, he should come in the team first, and he was there. He was part of the team in the 2024 T20 World Cup. He didn’t get a chance to play for a simple reason that there was no place. He even scored a century when he played before that. His name is there among the six Indians to have scored centuries in all formats,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel.

“However, there were a lot of Tests after that and he wasn’t picked for T20s. It was believed that Yashasvi was ahead in the pecking order. In the interim, Abhishek and Sanju opened and did well, and suddenly you realize there is no place. After that, when the opening comes, India goes with Shubman Gill,” he added.

“They not only went with him, but they also made him the vice-captain, which means he cannot be dropped. I had picked Yashasvi in the Asia Cup team I had picked. However, Shubman became the vice-captain, and the rest, as they say, is history. So Yashasvi, who was actually a frontrunner, was forgotten,” Chopra further remarked.

Gill’s snub led to Axar Patel getting reinstated as India's vice-captain in T20Is. Sanju Samson has been restored as first-choice opener with Ishan Kishan being picked as cover.

“Now when they left Shubman out, could Yashasvi have been there? He couldn’t have been there because the opener is Sanju Samson. So you will have to keep a wicketkeeper-opener as a backup. If we don’t do that, assuming Sanju has a stomach upset or has a fever before the game, what will you do?” Aakash reasoned.

“It seemed like Yash would 100 percent be part of the team, especially once Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma had taken retirement. He will have to still wait. This IPL will be important for him, but it’s very hard not to feel for Yashasvi because he has been scoring runs since 2023 and it’s 2025 now,” he concluded.

India’s squad for T20 World Cup 2026: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel (vc), Rinku Singh, Harshit Rana, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Ishan Kishan