Having a lot of options isn’t always the best thing. With their current pool of talent, Team India can easily produce at least three teams in white-ball cricket that are all equally skilled. Head coach Gautam Gambhir and captain Suryakumar Yadav will therefore need to get together and undertake the challenging process of choosing a playing XI when the Asia Cup 2025 gets underway in the UAE.
The choosing of their openers will be the largest dilemma Gambhir and SKY will face when the tournament gets going. India have had Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma at the top for a while. But now Shubman Gill has been appointed the vice-captain of the squad and Yashasvi Jaiswal has been named in the reserves.
Gill’s inclusion as vice-captain means he will certainly be in the XI and the opening slot suits him the best in white-ball cricket.
Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson have been the team’s opening batsmen for the past year or so. Although there have been individual performances, most of the time one player has performed well while the other has not. Abhishek Sharma, for example, averaged just 23 runs in 2024 but has amassed 279 runs and averaged 55 in five games this year.
Sanju, on the other hand, averages just 10 runs in 5 appearances this season compared to 436 in 13 innings last year, including three tons. It has been a mixed bag with these two. Abhishek finished with 439 runs at an average of 33 in the IPL 2025, while Sanju contributed 285 runs at an average of 35. Not horrible, but not outstanding either.
India Test captain Shubman Gill’s performances are now unavoidable. 578 runs in 21 innings in T20Is, 650 runs in the IPL, and more than 750 runs in the recent Test series against England, even though he has not represented India in the shortest format since 2024.
Named in the reserves, Jaiswal makes a compelling argument given his 559 IPL runs. When the squad was having trouble as a whole, he hit six fifties for Rajasthan Royals. He played the last of his 23 Twenty20 International in 2024, averaging 36.
Although a definitive response is impossible, according to different reports, it appears that Sanju, given his current performance, could be moved down the order, if he is selected in the playing XI in the Asia Cup. This year’s average score of 10 doesn’t assist his case. This might suggest that India might try to start with Shubman and Abhishek, who go back a long way while playing for Punjab.
