India’s T20I squads for the upcoming tours of Ireland and England, as well as for the Asian Games 2026, have been announced. Pacer Harshit Rana, who suffered a lengthy injury just ahead of this year’s T20 World Cup, has been included in all three squads, despite not playing a single match since. Former India cricketer Sadagoppan Ramesh blasted the Ajit Agarkar-led BCCI selection committee’s decision to bring Harshit straight back into the side, claiming that it would send a wrong message to players like Mohammed Shami.
“How have you selected Harshit Rana? I don’t think he has played any domestic cricket after knee surgery. Nobody knows the answer to this. Just imagine Shami’s mind voice now, or even the others’ mind voice,” Ramesh said in a video on his Instagram handle, as quoted by Sportskeeda.
Ramesh claimed that the selection committee had already set the precedent for players to prove their fitness in domestic cricket, but not followed it in Harshit’s case.
“Whether it was a Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma, the management said they had to play domestic cricket to be considered for selection. Even when Hardik Pandya got injured, he was asked to prove his fitness for selection. For Shami, they questioned if he could bowl longer spells after injury and asked him to prove himself after injury,” Ramesh explained.
“The current T20I skipper, Shreyas Iyer, himself was asked to prove his fitness before the New Zealand ODIs by playing the Vijay Hazare Trophy. There are many such examples like this. So they’ve set the precedent that if a player has to come back into the Indian team, especially after injury, he must prove himself and his fitness in domestic cricket,” he added.
Harshit was supposed to be part of India’s T20 World Cup 2026, but suffered a knee injury in a warm-up match. That led to Harshit missing the tournament as well as the subsequent Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 season, as he underwent knee surgery.