IPL – 2026 – Future and the T20 Format

Top Batsman for IPL 2026 Teams

Top Bowlers for IPL 2026 Teams

The Toppers are arranged in descending order of Wickets Taken and then least runs conceded

The Main T20 teams to consider only players below 35 years of age as on 31st December of the year of the tournament .. for T20 WC if it were to happen in 2026 it would require that a player should be born after 31st December 1991. A team (at least India) should announce a list of 25 players at the beginning of the year who could play or represent India during the year.

Team India for T20 Internationals (15 Players – Bold implies preference in Playing XI)

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Shubman Gill (C), Sanju Samson (WK), Ishan Kishan (Vice Captain), Shreyas Iyer, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Mohammed Siraj, Prince Yadav, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravi Bishnoi, Dhruv Jurel(WK), Arshdeep Singh and Anshul Kamboj

Reserve – (10 Players) – Devdutt Padikkal,, Priyansh Arya, Suyash Sharma, Devdutt Padikkal, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sai Sudharsan , Mohsin Khan, Ayush Mhatre, Madhav Tiwari and Sakib Hussain

India (Seniors) – 35 Plus as on 31st December 2026 (15 Players)- as a special case players not considered among 25 players above and born before 31st December 1993 (at least 33 Years) could be picked for Senior Team. Bold Implies preference for Palying XI.. Further matches of seniors team playing in T20 WC or pentangular contests would be considered as their T20 I games and T20 WC games (given seniors T20 WC takes shape and place in future)

Virat Kohli (Captain), KL Rahul (WK), Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma, Rajat Patidar, Nitish Rana, Ravindra Jadeja (Vice Captain), Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Kuldeep Yadav, Krunal Pandya, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Varun Chakravarthy.

Reserve (Seniors) – 5 Players -Hardik Pandya, Shardul Thakur, Yazuvendra Chahal, Ajinkya Rahane and Jitesh Sharma

Poor 3 P Captains – Parag Pant and Patel (actually 4th P Pandya has just exited ) One can not understand their mindset – Mohsin Khan with top spell in the tournament got only 5 Matches.. Ravi Bishnoi with 11 wickets and a 4 wicket haul is sidelined actually a player worthy of playing for India and Patel could not win some of the close games for his team especially not defending 264 is unpardonable ..

BCCI Annual Contract for Top 25 Players – The purse money other than the match fee

Group A – 3 Crores – Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Shreyas Iyer and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi

Group B – 2 Crores – Anshul Kamboj, Mohammed Siraj, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Rinku Singh, Ishan Kishan

Group C – 1 Crore – The remaining 15 players selected among 25 to play for India.

If other countries are not willing or available to play in a T20 World Cup for Seniors.. BCCI could arrange for Pentangular T20 Seniors series .. It is assumed that at least teams like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England, South Africa and New Zealand would love the opportunity to play in such contests.. If Pakistan do not wish to play in India they should wait for ICC to conduct T20 Seniors WC in future .. Further ICC should put a ban of 2 years on Bangladesh for not playing their T20 WC Matches.. (This is for T20 International Cricket)

Further, it should be made possible by ICC to arrange for triangular and /or pentangular T20 series instead of simple bilateral ties

It is OK if Cricket Pundits are not ready for 10-20-10 format of T20 Cricket they should seriously consider a T20 over to comprise of 5 legitimate deliveries instead of 6, making T20 Cricket a 100 Ball contest.

Possible Teams for pentangular tournaments T20I Series – Three teams from top Eight Teams of previous T20 WC – India, New Zealand, England, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and West Indies ( It was quite unfortunate that Bangladesh opted out of previous T20 WC and Australia could not make it to super eight, both teams could be among top 3 teams as well, the remaining two teams for Pentangular series should be from the remaining T20 I teams, this is to facilitate and nurture T20 cricket among other countries, though they should field players below the age of 35 as on 31st December of the year of the tournament.

Five Top Senior players could also be put on the Annual contract of 1 Crore – A Tentative list could include – Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah.

Number of Fifty Plus Scores by Teams

GT – 14 Three Wkt Hauls
RCB – 10 Three Wkt Hauls
SRH – 9 Three Wkt Hauls
CSK – 8 Three Wkt Hauls
DC – 6 Three Wkt Hauls
LSG – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
MI – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
KKR – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
PBKS – 3 Three Wkt Hauls
RR – 3 Three Wkt Hauls
(10 rows)

Number of 3 W plus Hauls by Teams

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GT – 14 Three Wkt Hauls
RCB – 10 Three Wkt Hauls
SRH – 9 Three Wkt Hauls
CSK – 8 Three Wkt Hauls
DC – 6 Three Wkt Hauls
LSG – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
MI – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
KKR – 4 Three Wkt Hauls
PBKS – 3 Three Wkt Hauls
RR – 3 Three Wkt Hauls
(10 rows)

Long Back I had a thought of ex-players to vote for team selection besides other factors such as current form, strength in a particular format and availability ..

Here I think it would be fair enough to prepare a list of 50 players below 35 years of age by BCCI to be considered among 25 players for their services during the year for country .. This applies only for T20 Internationals .. I am afraid I do not believe in too many formats and formats where more countries are not able to participate for time consuming activity in ODI and Test Cricket..

The following senior and reputed players qualify for one vote for the choice of their 25 players from the 50 ..

Team of Selectors (Voters – Bold Vote counts 2 points- Remaining One Vote worth one point each ) – Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Mohinder Amarnath, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Dilip Vengsarkar, Kris Srikkanth, Madan Lal, Mohammed Kaif, Kiran More, Saba Karim, Kirti Azad, Sunil Valson, Irfan Pathan. The players would have to vote in person on a given day at one of the Centres of Cricket in India – If possible it could be made dynamic, calling out the players under consideration being pronounced and 25 players pressing the Yes Button, the votes once casted could not be undone or changed a voter ceases to cast votes once he has voted 25 times to select players of his choice.

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are not included as they are going to represent India Seniors for another one or two years ( I definitely would love to put a sealing on upper age limit for India Seniors at 40). A player should not be considered once he has crossed the 40th Birthday. Gautam Gambhir is not considered as he is the present coach of team India and Roger Binny is President BCCI, the members above if part of selection committee could be replaced by non-member selection committee player of repute.

Further Once the 25 have been short-listed it is the responsibility of Selection Committee and three coaches for team India (Batting, Bowling and Fielding – one of whom could be the head coach) to select 15 players for a series or a tournament or bilateral Matches.

One last word – For selection of top 50 players for voting purpose, Eligible players could be divided into 5 Zones (North, East, West,South and Central ) in total 10 matches (each team playing the other once – It could be called Selection Trophy) of T20 to be held prior to Vote casting by the panel given above, just to help their mindset about consolidation of a player for voting besides the annual performance.

Whether Rajasthan Royals would pick their best XI or Twelve remains to be seen and their victory still remains hinged on the success story of their star batsman Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who may or may not come up trumps in the heated up match with Mumbai Indians who play in their own backyard.. a definite advantage exists for MI, the conditions are best known to their important players even if they have not delivered desired performances in the matches so far .. it can change today as old warhorses are wrongly hell bent on stopping Sooryavnashi from entering into main India XI as long as possible as is visible in the ODI team selection for Afghanistan ODI series.

What is in store is to be seen to be believed .. it is likely that Vaibhav Sooryavnashi might not win the overall battle yet I would say he is capable of accepting the Bumrah Challenge.. he may not be as agressive against superstar bowler who is on his decline ..

If I were with RR Management the following could feature in the playing XI – Jaiswal, Sooryavanshi, Jurel, Hetmyer, Parag (C), Shanaka, Jadeja, Ferreira, Bishnoi, Burger, Archer impact Punja (for Sooryavanshi)

My heart goes with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi who had first impressed in the last IPL season and later at under-19 World Cup just before the IPL 2026 got underway.. May this great youngster be blessed with an opportunity to be part of playoffs.. who knows he might stun the likes of Virat Kohli (RCB Hero) and trio of Abhishek-Klaasen-Ishan (of SRH) and also Sudharsan-Gill magic of GT. .

Today at IPL 2026 – RR v LSG – Well Done RR

One of the greatest day in IPL playoff race .. Rajasthan Royals need to win it for sure as also the other remaining game later against Mumbai Indians.. but for now let us find out how they should play when they play against LSG .. the lowest placed team at this stage.. Both have had their tense moments owing to the poor team selection and below par captaincy from Parag and Pant.. One can not think of Parag not only dropping Ravi Bishnoi one of the few bowlers with 4 wicket hauls with 10 or more total wickets.. and Ravindra Jadeja the undoubted top spinning all rounder ever after Ravi Shastri.. and hero of many an Indian victories.. If I were in RR management I would chose the following players in XI with an impact player to look up to .

Rajasthan Royals – Ravindra Jadeja (Captain) – Batting Order – Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Shimron Hetmyer, Riyan Parag, Ravindra Jadeja, Donovan Ferreira, Ravi Bishnoi, Jofra Archer, Tushar Deshpande and Nandre Burger Impact – Sandeep Sharma (for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi). – My words have no value I do not think Rajasthan Royals is doing any justice to their team selection.. they must be prepared to chase a target in excess of 220 for sure and if little heart crumbles so would be the future of RR in this edition of IPL ..

I am not giving a playing XI for LSG for the fact even if they were to win this it would only help them with no gains except being branded as team that stopped the roaring young lad Vaibhav Sooryavanshi from showing up in the playoffs .. nevertheless Pant however has elements within his team capable of doing so..

Future of IPL – Indian players to be divided into 5 Zones instead of present franchisees .. North, South,East,West and Central with headquarters at North – Delhi, East – Kolkata West – Mumbai South – Chennai and Central – Ahmedabad .. The divisions of Zones could be worked out on the basis of place of birth with states divided into the four zones the Central Zone could field a player from any of the zones who has not been picked in one of the 4 zonal teams ..

Zone classification for players could be at the choice of players by virtue of birth or their present city of residence (minimum one year) . A player should not have crossed 40 years as on 31st December of the previous year to IPL event.

North – Virat Kohli (Captain) South – KL Rahul (Captain) East – Suryakumar Yadav (Captain) West – Rohit Sharma (Captain) and Central – Shubman Gill (Captain)

In addition to the five Indian teams above, invitation could be sent to top 5 teams of the world with invitation sum of 2 Crores to make up 10 teams.

The tournament to be possibly held in 10-20-10 format and an over comprising of 5 balls instead of present 6 balls. 12 players to be listed after toss where one of them would be used as impact player. The league phase would involve each team playing the invited world teams once in 25 matches. the top five teams the qualify for super league playing each other once making up 10 matches. However, here is a twist – the ranking of teams would include their performances in these two leagues to arrive at the top two teams of the tournament which play a best of three finals to decide the new IPL champion ..

Addendum –

• Australia, South Africa, England, New Zealand and West Indies could be the five invited teams
• A team could comprise only of 15 players below the age of 40 as stated above
• The team winning the toss decides whether they bat first (10 Overs) or bat second (20 overs) followed by remaining 10 overs of team batting first
• An over consists of 5 deliveries .. with one permitted bouncer .. A bowler could send a maximum of 5 Overs requiring at least four bowlers to bowl the required 20 overs (100 Balls)
• The Power play to be reduced to 4 Overs (20 Balls) for team batting first to be divided into 2 overs in each appearance.
• Each win gets two points for a team and three points if it is an innings victory
• Innings Victory for team batting first – if team batting first scores more runs in their first 10 overs (first innings) and then gets all 10 wickets of team batting second (2nd innings 20 Over) within that score they would not be required to bat their next 10 overs (third in kings) and thus defeat team batting second by an innings and some runs
• Innings Victory for team batting second – if the team batting first gets all out within their stipulated 10 overs of the first innings and the team batting second makes those runs in their innings (20 Overs) the team batting second wins by an innings as team batting first has no players available to play in their second innings (third innings of the match).
• There is no net run rate equation involved .. in case of a tie the team who scored more runs from same number of matches qualifies applicable for multi-way tie as well.
• Every match would have two players of the match – the best batsman and the best bowler from either side (winning or loosing)
• Player of the series, Golden Batsman and Golden Bowler to be awarded to three distinct players i.e. Player of the series can not be given additional award nor Golden Batsman could be given the Golden Bowler award
• The Champions and runners-up to be awarded suitable prize money besides the two trophies