Rishabh Pant Named Rest of India Captain for the Irani Cup After Missing Out on the West Indies Squads

Alongside its squads for the West Indies series, the BCCI also confirmed the Rest of India line-up for this year's Irani Cup — with Rishabh Pant named captain and Sarfaraz Khan his vice-captain, for a fixture that carries added weight given Pant's omission from both national white-ball squads announced the same day.

Who Rest of India are playing

Rest of India face Jammu and Kashmir, the reigning Ranji Trophy champions, at the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium in Srinagar from October 1 to 5. The full squad reads: Pant (c, wk), Sanat Sangwan, Shikhar Mohan, Sudip Gharami, Sarfaraz Khan (vc), Smaran Ravichandran, Manav Suthar, Saransh Jain, Akash Deep (subject to fitness), Mukesh Kumar, Mukesh Choudhary, Aryan Juyal (wk), Aryan Pandey, Anukul Roy and Ayush Doseja.

Why the timing matters

The fixture lands squarely between two white-ball assignments Pant did not make the cut for — the West Indies ODIs from September 27 and the T20Is from October 6 — giving him a four-day first-class match to put runs on the board in the middle of that gap. A red-ball leadership assignment is a different kind of test to the format he has been dropped from, but a prominent role against the country's reigning Ranji champions is as high-profile a domestic stage as Indian cricket offers outside the international team itself.

Analysis: a chance to answer selectors in the format he still owns

Pant remains a Test regular, and captaining Rest of India is as much a statement of continued faith in his long-term standing in Indian cricket as it is a consolation assignment after a white-ball snub. Runs and clean glovework in Srinagar won't automatically restore his ODI or T20I spot, but a strong showing keeps him visibly in the selectors' conversation rather than out of sight during a stretch when two newer names have been given his opportunities in the shorter formats.

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The Rest of India squad, the fixture details and Pant's squad omissions are verified against same-day BCCI announcements, current as of September 17, 2026.