India's selectors made two separate squad changes on October 1, both tied to the same balancing act the team management is now running between the final leg of the West Indies series and preparation for a much bigger assignment: the multi-format tour of New Zealand later in October.
Prasidh Krishna has been ruled out of the third and final ODI against West Indies in New Chandigarh on October 3 after sustaining a hamstring injury during the second ODI in Guwahati, where he bowled only five overs before leaving the field in the 31st over of West Indies' innings. Anshul Kamboj has been added as his replacement. Kamboj was already in the country playing for India A against Australia A in Puducherry, where he had taken 3 for 34 in the first innings, before being pulled out for the senior-team call-up. With the series already won 2-0, the match carries little result pressure, giving Kamboj a low-stakes opportunity to make his case in India's pace pool.
Separately, India's selectors withdrew Washington Sundar from the five-match T20I squad against West Indies, which begins in Lucknow on October 6. The decision is explicitly about red-ball preparation: with the Ranji Trophy season starting October 11 and India's Test series in New Zealand to follow, Washington will instead play first-class cricket for his state side to sharpen his red-ball game ahead of the tour. Naman Dhir, uncapped in T20Is but a regular performer in the format — 1,222 runs at a strike rate of 156.2 across 61 T20s, including 318 runs at a strike rate of 147.22 in IPL 2026 for Mumbai Indians — comes in as his replacement.
Both changes fit into a broader selection plan already taking shape around the New Zealand tour: India's Test regulars, including captain Shubman Gill and vice-captain KL Rahul, are expected to play Ranji Trophy fixtures for their states once that season starts, and the identified pace group for the New Zealand Tests — Mohammed Siraj, Gurnoor Brar, Prasidh Krishna, Auqib Nabi and Akash Deep — is being managed with an eye on red-ball overs rather than white-ball workload in the weeks before the Tests begin. Prasidh's hamstring issue, even though it rules him out of a dead rubber, will now also be a fitness factor the medical team monitors ahead of that red-ball assignment.
For fantasy teams picking from the remaining West Indies fixtures, Kamboj's inclusion for the third ODI and Dhir's for the T20I series are the two changes worth noting immediately — both are direct swap-ins with real opportunity to stake a claim, rather than like-for-like injury cover with limited game time. Dhir in particular arrives with recent IPL form and a top-order-adjacent role that could make him a differential pick across the five-match T20I series.
Updated squads and live scores from the remaining West Indies fixtures are available on SportGod's live matches page, with fantasy team-building tools on SportGod's free games and AI-powered previews on SportGod's predictions page. More India squad coverage is on SportGod's blog.
The squad changes, player statistics and series dates in this article are verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting, current as of October 1, 2026.
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