Mumbai: Team India will look to retain the Asian Games gold medal in cricket later this month. And it will be VVS Laxman who will be guiding the Shreyas Iyer-led team at the Games to be held in Aich-Nagoya.
Laxman, who heads the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, will serve as the national team’s head coach because the Asian Games clashes with a white-ball series against the West Indies. Regular all-format head coach Gautam Gambhir will be busy with that home series, comprising three ODIs and as many T20Is.
The Ruturaj Gaikwad-led Indian men, who claimed gold in 2023 Asian Games, will open their campaign in the 2026 Asian Games on September 28, in the quarterfinal at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin. If they advance, the semifinal will be played on October 1 and the-gold medal match is scheduled for October 3.
The India-West Indies ODI series begins on September 27 in Thiruvananthapuram, followed by games in Guwahati (Sept 30) and New Chandigarh, Mullanpur (October 3).
Laxman has coached the men in blue previously, most recently during the tour of Zimbabwe in July.
He will get a full-strength team, as announced by the selection committee last month.
The cricket competition at the 2026 Asian Games will be played in the T20I format. Besides skipper Iyer, the squad features Jasprit Bumrah, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Arshdeep Singh, Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson.
There was talk of the BCCI mulling a second-string team because of inadequate facilities at the cricket venue in Japan, but those concerns seem to have been addressed.
