India appointed a new vice-captain for the T20I series against England and handed the job to Axar Patel. Shubman Gill has been rested for the series. He was appointed the vice-captain of the white-ball teams in 2024. Suryakumar Yadav will continue to lead and will be assisted by Axar. The selection committee once again ignored Hardik Pandya and didn't bring him back into the leadership group.

The selectors' decision to ignore Pandya from the leadership group surprised Aakash Chopra. The former India opener has questioned the decision to ignore Hardik and asked what happened to him suddenly.

"That is my point - what happened with Hardik Pandya? No one is thinking or talking about him. What exactly has happened? His T20 World Cup was very good and after that, he played a lot of domestic cricket as well. He is an IPL team's captain and India have won five of the six T20I series he has captained. Hardik Pandya used to be the captain when Rohit wasn't available," Aakash Chopra said.

"What has happened suddenly that he is not even the vice-captain? He is not even becoming a point of discussion, as to why is Hardik Pandya not the captain. You cannot blame him for the Mumbai Indians' bad season. Even if he had a bad season and his captaincy might have been bad, what does the Indian team have to do with that?"

Hardik joined Team India's leadership group in June 2022 and assisted Rishabh Pant in the T20I series against South Africa. He led the Men in Blue on the Ireland tour. Hardik also led the team in the T20I series against New Zealand after the 2022 T20 World Cup.

The star all-rounder assisted Rohit Sharma in the 2024 T20 World Cup and looked set to become the new T20I captain after the ICC event. But the selectors ignored Hardik and handed the job to Suryakumar. Hardik was dropped from the leadership group altogether after the ICC event.

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