Director of Cricket at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence (CoE), VVS Laxman, will take charge of the Indian men’s team at the upcoming Asian Games, which will be held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, later this month. Amol Muzumdar will continue as the head coach of the Indian women’s team.
This will be the second time Laxman has served as coach of the Indian men’s team at the Asian Games, following his involvement in 2022, in Hangzhou, China, when the nation won the gold medal.
Laxman will have Sunil Joshi, Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Subhadeep Ghosh as his support coaches during the Asiad, according to the release by the Sports Ministry.
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Regular Indian men’s team coach Gautam Gambhir will not be available for the trip to Japan, as he will be with the ODI team at home for the series against West Indies, which begins on September 27.
The cricket tournament at the Asian Games will begin on September 17. The men’s event will get underway a week later, on September 24, with India to play their first match on September 28.
Muzumdar will continue as the women’s team head coach for the Asian Games, and will be assisted by bowling coach Aavishkar Salvi and fielding coach Munish Bali. The women’s event will get underway on September 17, with India, defending champions, to take on Japan in the quarters.
In cricket, India will defend its men’s T20 Asian Games title under captain Shreyas Iyer, with teenage batting sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi also part of the squad. The Indian women’s team will also defend its title and will be led by Harmanpreet Kaur.
Indian cricket teams at Asian Games 2026:
Indian men’s cricket team: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
Indian women’s cricket team: Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Pratika Rawal, Deepti Sharma, Richa Ghosh, Gunalan Kamalini, Bharti Fulmali, Sree Charani, Renuka Thakur, Kranti Gaud, Arundhati Reddy, Shreyanka Patil, Radha Yadav, Nandani Sharma.