The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has named KL Rahul as India’s interim ODI captain for the South Africa series. Interestingly, the squad announcement didn’t specify who would serve as Rahul’s deputy. Traditionally, the BCCI names both the skipper and a stand-in skipper, should the captain be unavailable.
But that didn’t happen this time around. Why? Regular captain Shubman Gill’s neck injury prompted the BCCI to appoint Rahul as captain. In normal circumstances, vice-captain Shreyas Iyer would step in, but he is also out due to injury. While a replacement batter for Shreyas was named, no announcement was made about who will assume vice-captain duties if Rahul becomes unavailable.
Which again begs the question, why has BCCI changed their methods this time around? We don’t have an answer. In fact, no one other than the board does. However, one can speculate and logically reason the decision.
Why no vice-captain for the South Africa ODI series?
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are past the captaincy stage in their careers. They are leaders and are actively involved in decision-making on the field, but don’t need any official tags anymore.
The only other senior player in the team, Ravindra Jadeja, isn’t a regular in the ODI team. He was dropped from the squad for the Australia tour. It doesn’t make sense to name him deputy to Rahul if he might get dropped in the next series?
The simple answer behind BCCI not naming a vice-captain is the absence of Axar Patel and Hardik Pandya. The former remains fit, but perhaps the management wants to manage his workload since he’s an all-format player. The latter has been rehabbing at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru since he suffered a left quadriceps injury during the 2025 Asia Cup.
Axar has been named vice-captain to Suryakumar Yadav in T20Is in the past and could have been handed the role again. But he hasn’t been selected. As mentioned above, it’s uncertain why. We don’t know whether he’s been dropped or rested. But it’s the absence of these two and an otherwise fairly young and inexperienced team that BCCI hasn’t named a deputy to Rahul.
India ODI squad for South Africa series
Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul (c & wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Tilak Verma, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana
