India’s selectors stripped Rishabh Pant of two jobs on Tuesday, naming KL Rahul the new Test vice-captain for the one-off match against Afghanistan and handing the one-day international (ODI) wicketkeeping role to Ishan Kishan for the three-game series that follows. Chief selector Ajit Agarkar confirmed both moves at a virtual press conference in Guwahati, while keeping Pant in the Test XI as the first-choice keeper-batter.
The cuts arrive at the back end of an Indian Premier League (IPL, the country’s domestic Twenty20 league) season in which Pant’s Lucknow Super Giants sit ninth on the points table with eight points from 13 matches, mathematically out of the playoff race, and his own bat has produced 204 runs at an average just above 25.
Two Roles Gone, One Test Spot Held
The Test, scheduled for the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur from June 6 to 10, will be Rahul’s first outing in the vice-captain’s chair under Shubman Gill. Pant keeps the gloves and his middle-order place in the longer format. He is out of the ODI squad entirely. Kishan, back in the 50-over set-up for the first time since 2023, takes the wicketkeeping role for matches running June 14 through 20 across Dharamsala, Lucknow, and Chennai.
Agarkar made a point of separating the two decisions when asked. “Rishabh is an incredible Test player. He is one of our main batters in that line-up,” the selector said, before adding, “At this point, yes, we have gone with two different options in one-day cricket. But in Test cricket, he remains one of our main players.”
The Test squad also features three uncapped names: left-arm spinner Manav Suthar, fast bowler Gurnoor Brar, and Vidarbha’s left-arm spin all-rounder Harsh Dubey. Jasprit Bumrah is absent from both squads while his workload is built up ahead of the white-ball tour of England in July. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli return to the ODI side, fitness permitting, for what will be their first international cricket since the 2025 Champions Trophy. The dual change to Pant’s portfolio, in one announcement, looks like this:
| Format | Previous Role | Status After May 19 |
|---|---|---|
| Test | Vice-captain, first-choice keeper-batter | First-choice keeper-batter only |
| ODI | First-choice keeper-batter | Out of squad |
| T20I | Not in side since 2024 final | Not in side |
KL Rahul’s Captaincy Insurance Policy
Rahul has captained India in three previous Tests, the most recent run coming when Gill suffered a neck injury during the home series against South Africa in November. Pant served as stand-in captain for that Guwahati Test in the South Africa series; Rahul took over the ODI captaincy when Gill was ruled out of the white-ball matches that followed.
Agarkar pointed directly at that sequence in explaining the change.
In case, we saw during the South African series as well, when Shubman got injured, KL provides us with the necessary experience that you need in case the situation arises. Plus, he has had a really good tour of England and against the West Indies and has lots of experience.
The logic is straightforward. With Gill’s neck still being managed and a five-Test return tour to England loading the calendar in the summer of 2027, the vice-captain may end up captaining a Test inside the next twelve months. Rahul has done that job before. Pant has done it once, in November, and his Lucknow side’s IPL run has not strengthened the case for handing him the responsibility again.
The pick also says something about how the selectors view the captaincy ladder. Pant, at 28, was the obvious next-generation choice when he was first elevated to vice-captain. Rahul, at 34, is the safer hand on a one-Test brief that will be played without the team’s strike fast bowler and with three uncapped players in the 15.
The IPL Numbers Behind the Call
The leadership question cannot be cleanly separated from the captain-of-LSG question. Lucknow paid ₹27 crore (about $3.2 million) to retain Pant ahead of this season, the largest sum in IPL auction history. Their campaign has now ended without a playoff berth, after nine defeats in 13 matches. Lucknow sit ninth, ahead only of Chennai Super Kings on net run rate.
Pant’s individual contribution has tracked the team’s slide. His 204 runs in nine matches arrived at a strike rate of 126.84 and an average above 25, with one half-century, no centuries, and no innings of 60 or more. For a wicketkeeper-batter whose retention fee implied a top-three finisher in T20 cricket, the season has not produced the case that a leadership upgrade was due.
Agarkar did not single out IPL form when addressing the role change, choosing instead to frame the call as forward-looking. “We want him to become the best Test player that he has always been,” the chairman said. The frame is generous; the data underneath the frame is harder to soften.
There is also the cumulative load to account for. Across formats Pant has carried the LSG captaincy, the national Test vice-captaincy, the senior-keeper brief in two formats, and the public face of one of the league’s biggest franchises. Removing two of those pieces in a single announcement reduces the load before the white-ball England trip in July and the home Test season later in the year begin landing on his calendar.
Why Ishan Kishan Takes the ODI Gloves
Kishan’s recall reads as a parallel verdict on the white-ball side of the keeper conversation. The 27-year-old wicketkeeper-batter spent two years out of the ODI picture after stepping away from the national set-up in 2023, and earned his way back via Vijay Hazare Trophy runs, a place in India’s T20 World Cup-winning squad in March, and an opening run with Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) that has already yielded a playoff seat. He scored an unbeaten 70 in the playoff-clinching win over Chennai Super Kings last week.
His ODI numbers are the kind selectors prefer to start with: 933 runs in 27 matches at 42.40, with a double-century. That double, an unbeaten 210 against Bangladesh in December 2022, remains the highest ODI score by any Indian wicketkeeper. At the T20 World Cup, his 317 runs at a strike rate of 193.29 earned him a place in the ICC Team of the Tournament alongside Sanju Samson, Hardik Pandya and Bumrah.
Agarkar laid out the white-ball reasoning more openly than the Test rationale, citing the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa. “We know what Ravindra Jadeja or Axar Patel can do, and this is the time we try to give some opportunity to some of the other guys,” he said. The Kishan-for-Pant swap is the most visible part of that widening, and the one that carries the sharpest individual cost.
A Wider Reshuffle in Spin and Pace Stocks
The twin demotion sits inside a broader reshuffle. The selectors rested Jadeja from the Afghanistan Test after he picked up a knee niggle in Rajasthan Royals’ weekend defeat to Delhi Capitals, and Axar Patel from the ODI squad. Both slots open up for Dubey, the 23-year-old all-rounder who took 69 first-class wickets to drive Vidarbha to the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy title and captained the same side to the Vijay Hazare Trophy this season.
Two more names framed the press conference and one absence shaped it:
- Auqib Nabi, the Jammu and Kashmir seamer who claimed 60 wickets at an average of 13.25 in the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy and helped his state win its first national title, was discussed but not picked. “He was close, but at this point, we have gone with the three that we have picked,” Agarkar said.
- Mohammed Shami, absent from the national set-up since the 2025 Champions Trophy win, was not discussed at all. The selectors’ read, per Agarkar, is that “T20 cricket is what he is sort of ready for” right now.
- Bumrah is being kept in workload-management mode and is expected back for the white-ball tour of England that begins July 1 in Durham, alongside the three uncapped seamers and spinners called into the Afghanistan group.
Board secretary Devajit Saikia used the same press conference to lay out the limits of selector control during the IPL. Franchises manage centrally contracted players’ fitness during the league, with the Centre of Excellence (CoE) physios monitoring workload but not dictating it. National selection sits downstream of that.
The Mullanpur Test and the Road to England
Pant will walk out at Mullanpur on June 6 still the first-choice Test keeper, still owner of a hundred in each innings at Headingley last summer, still 28, still on 3,476 Test runs at an average of 42.91 across 49 matches. The selectors have not disputed any of those numbers. They have, in this announcement, reduced the off-field load that sat on top of them: an IPL franchise to lead, a vice-captain’s brief, a place in every white-ball squad.
The Test runs to June 10. Lucknow’s playoff door is already shut, so the IPL season ends earlier still for the captain who carried it. India’s white-ball tour of England begins July 1, the 2027 ODI World Cup builds from there, and a five-match Test tour to England follows in the summer after that.
If Pant strings together a long innings at Mullanpur and the IPL season closes without further damage to his white-ball case, the Test vice-captaincy can be re-opened by the time the squad lands at Heathrow. If the one-off Test passes quietly and the IPL ends as it stands, Rahul’s interim status starts to look settled, and the next conversation is about whether the keeper’s gloves stay with the same name across formats at all.
