NEW DELHI — Mohammed Siraj walked off the field in New Chandigarh on Monday after India’s one-off Test against Afghanistan ended inside three days. By Tuesday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India had quietly removed him from the squads for the tours of Ireland and England. The sequence, barely 24 hours apart, told a clearer story than the official statement that followed.
The BCCI said the decision had been taken “as a precautionary measure to ensure adequate recovery ahead of a long international season.” Prasidh Krishna, his Gujarat Titans team-mate, was named as the replacement for both the two-match T20I series in Ireland and the five-match T20I series in England.
What the statement did not say: Siraj had just completed a 17-game IPL 2026 campaign, taking 19 wickets for Gujarat Titans in their run to the final, before being called straight into the Test squad without a break. The Afghanistan match concluded Monday. The Ireland series begins June 26. The gap between one assignment and the next was, for Siraj, effectively nothing.
According to the BCCI, following discussions between its medical team and the team management, Siraj was advised a period of rest as part of his workload management programme. The board has not confirmed when he would be available again, which leaves open the question of whether he returns for the three-match ODI series against England scheduled from July 14 to 19 — the assignment that immediately follows the T20I leg.
Prasidh offers a different kind of solution to the same problem. Siraj played in each of the 17 matches for Gujarat Titans in IPL 2026, while Prasidh featured in 12 games during their run to the final. The numbers are not the whole picture — bowling loads per match vary — but the gap is real enough that the selectors apparently felt comfortable reaching for Prasidh rather than another available option.
Prasidh took 16 wickets in IPL 2026, building on a remarkable last two seasons that turned him from an injury-plagued fringe player into one of India’s more reliable white-ball pace options. His 25-wicket IPL 2025 season, which earned him the Purple Cap, had already re-established him as a selector’s favourite. The Karnataka seamer’s ability to extract bounce and skid on flatter surfaces makes him a functional fit for English conditions, where he has Test experience from the 2025 tour.
The squad Shreyas Iyer will captain is otherwise unchanged from the one announced last week. Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan provide the batting options at the top, while Tilak Varma continues as vice-captain. The spin department features Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi and Varun Chakaravarthy — a combination that raised some tactical questions when it was first named, given England’s record against wrist spin in home conditions.
India will play the first T20I against Ireland on June 26, followed by the second on June 28, before a five-match T20I series in England from July 1 to July 11, concluding with three ODIs against England from July 14 to July 19.
The broader context matters here. Following the conclusion of the Ireland and England tours, India will feature in the men’s cricket competition at the 2026 Asian Games, which will be played in the T20 format, running from September 24 to October 3. India named a full-strength squad for the Asian Games earlier this month, with Jasprit Bumrah returning to the fold — an indication that the selectors are carefully rationing who plays what and when across a calendar that offers almost no gaps.
The BCCI has not offered a position on when Siraj will feature again. That silence is doing work the statement doesn’t. India’s next Test cycle begins sooner than most fans realise, and Siraj — one of the few bowlers in the squad with the ability to swing the ball in both directions under heavy cloud cover — is a different kind of resource in red-ball cricket than the fast-bowling lineup that travels to Ireland and England for white-ball fixtures. Protecting him from T20I cricket that Prasidh can absorb equally well is a reasonable calculation. Whether the total volume of cricket the squad faces over the next six months allows for any genuine recovery window, for Siraj or anyone else, is a question the BCCI has elected not to answer.
