Suryakumar Yadav had an ordinary 2025<\/a> before roaring back to form in 2026. Vice-captain Axar Patel, a quality defensive spinner and an excellent player of spin, will be the second all-rounder of the XI. Over the past few years, Tilak and Dube have established themselves as permanent fixtures in the side as well. <\/p>\nWankhede assists pace more than spin, which will bring Arshdeep Singh in the mix ahead of Kuldeep Yadav. Since India bat until eight, Harshit Rana\u2019s batting credentials are not going to give him the edge over Arshdeep either. <\/p>\n
That makes it nine out the XI: what India will need are Abhishek\u2019s opening partner, a death-over hitter, and the third strike bowler.<\/p>\n
The second opener <\/p>\n
Sanju Samson was Abhishek\u2019s partner of choice when India began the New Zealand series. Against New Zealand, however, he made 46 runs in 34 balls across five innings. Given his usual high-risk approach to powerplay batting, the team management might have ignored this as a small sample \u2013 had Ishan Kishan not smashed 215 runs at a strike rate of 231 in the same series.<\/p>\n
In the warm-up game against South Africa at Navi Mumbai, India made their choice clear by using Kishan as Abhishek\u2019s partner. Kishan blasted a 20-ball 53 with seven sixes. Samson did not bat in India\u2019s innings of 240-5.<\/p>\n
There is one problem, however: with Tilak at one-drop, India will now have three left-handers in their top three (and probably two more in the top seven). Expect off-spinners to open bowling against them.<\/p>\n
The finisher <\/p>\n
Rinku is the obvious choice, but there are two alternatives. One, they India get both Samson and Kishan in and drop Tilak to five. And two, being overwhelming favourites, India may give Washington Sundar a go at seven.<\/p>\n
However, Rinku remains the likeliest option. Among Full Member batters with 500 runs while batting between No.5 and No.8, only Tim David (175) and Andre Russell (163) have better strike rates than Rinku\u2019s 161.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s T20 World Cup 2026 starting XI:<\/p>\n
Abhishek Sharma
Ishan Kishan (wk)
Tilak Varma
Suryakumar Yadav (c)
Shivam Dube
Hardik Pandya
Rinku Singh
Axar Patel
Arshdeep Singh
Jasprit Bumrah
Varun Chakravarthy<\/p>\n
Cover StoriesCover Stories AsiaCover Stories UKCover Stories IndiaSeries Cover Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India will begin there T20 World Cup campaign on February 7 against USA. This is their likely starting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-410534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"India](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/7dCYiYbL6P.jpg\")
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