“Aapke reserve players mein kaise nahi hai woh” - Ex-Indian cricketer slams selectors for excluding Shreyas Iyer

Former Indian assistant coach Abhishek Nayar has stated his disappointment with the Indian selection committee’s treatment of Shreyas Iyer, who has been excluded from the Indian squad for the Asia Cup 2025 campaign, scheduled to start on Tuesday, September 9.

Iyer, who led the Punjab Kings’ franchise to the grand finale in the IPL 2025 season, accumulated 604 runs from 17 games at a strike rate of 175.07 with the best score of an unbeaten 97-run knock against the Gujarat Titans, is not even part of the standby players.

"I don't know, actually, I wanted to ask that question; aapke reserve players mein kaise nahi hai woh, if he is such a strong contender. Sometimes, you know, selection meetings can be quite interesting, and the discussions that happen in them can be very interesting," Nayar said on Star Sports.

"But I can't fathom, and I don't understand, what reason can justify Shreyas Iyer not being part of that 20-member squad. I'm not even talking about the 15, I'm talking about the 20-member squad, which sends a message to Shreyas Iyer that he is not in the team's scheme of things. Because even if things don't work out, he is still not coming into the team. Either Riyan Parag is going to make the cut, or someone else is," he added.

"So, the big question here is that maybe they are not looking at him from a T20 point of view — or perhaps any other point of view. But I always say this that any selection after a while is, 'who you like a little more than the other'. In that regard, maybe Shreyas Iyer is not liked as much as someone else. Maybe,” he noted.

India is part of Group A in the Asia Cup 2025 competition alongside Pakistan, Oman, and the UAE. Their first game is scheduled to be against the UAE on Wednesday, September 9. Later, they will take on the arch-rivals Pakistan on Sunday, September 14, before ending their group stage against Oman on Friday, September 19.

India’s T20I squad for Asia Cup 2025: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Shubman Gill (vc), Hardik Pandya, Arshdeep Singh, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Jitesh Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Rinku Singh, Sanju Samson.

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