Shubman Gill addresses absence from India's T20 World Cup 2026 plans

Shubman Gill has come to terms with the decision of the senior men's selection committee to leave him out of India's squad for the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026.

Speaking to the reporters on the eve of India's first ODI game against New Zealand in Vadodara, Gill said he was "right where I have to be in my life" and wished Team India luck for the marquee tournament.

"I believe I am right where I have to be in my life," Gill was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo. "Whatever is in my destiny, nobody can take it away from me. Obviously, as a player, you believe that if you play the World Cup, you can win it for your team, for your country. Having said that, I respected the selectors' decision. And wishing the T20 team all the very best, and I really, really hope that they win the World Cup for us."

Gill was drafted into India's squad for the Asia Cup as vice-captain in September and played a total of 15 games before the selectors announced the team for the T20 World Cup on December 20. He couldn't breach the 50-run mark throughout that stretch and mostly played second fiddle to Abhishek Sharma while opening the innings.

He was unfortunate to miss the T20I series decider against South Africa in Ahmedabad due to a foot injury and was forced to make way for Sanju Samson.

Shubman Gill wants time to prepare ahead of red-ball contests

Gill wants to ensure India's Test side gets an adequate amount of time to prepare in the lead-up to contests to produce the best possible results. He felt the tight scheduling of the last two red-ball series against the West Indies and South Africa at home couldn't give the side enough time to fine-tune their prep, and it is something that should be avoided moving forward.

"One of the suggestions that I was very keen on is, if you would see in the last two Test series that we played, we didn't have that much time to prepare," Gill said. "It's not easy playing another match in a different country and then playing in India on the fourth day. Especially when you're traveling on long tours.

"I feel even if we would have won the series against South Africa, it still wouldn't have made that much of a difference [in terms of adequate preparation] because we know we need to prepare well to be able to win Test matches all over the world. Preparation for me is really big, and I didn't think that we had that much time to prepare when we came back from Australia, or even after the Asia Cup when we played the West Indies series.

"I think it's important to at least have some bit of preparation, some time [to prepare]. Especially when changing from white-ball format to red-ball. So this was one of the things that I was very keen on, and I think we'll take some action and we'll keep it in mind to be able to prepare well before the start of any red-ball series."