India, Dec. 21 -- Shubman Gill's slide in T20Is has now reached the one line batter even wants to read: left out of a World Cup squad.

India's Test and ODI captain was not picked in the T20 World Cup 2026 team announced on December 20, a call that ends a strangely compressed 18-month loop, from reserves to leadership elevation, and straight back to the outside looking in.

Shubman Gill was only a travelling reserve for the 2024 T20 World Cup, which India won in Barbados. Within weeks, though, the script flipped. He captained a second-string Indian side in Zimbabwe and won the five-match T20I series 4-1, a leadership audition that strengthened his white-ball standing.

By July 2024, Gill had been elevated to white-ball captaincy across fo...