India’s Centre of Excellence head VVS Laxman will coach the senior men’s team on their three-match T20I tour of Zimbabwe and at the 2026 Asian Games in Japan, according to PTI. Gautam Gambhir steps back from both assignments as India’s calendar forces a division of coaching duties that the BCCI has used before, though never quite in the circumstances surrounding this one.
The scheduling logic is straightforward. The England series ends on July 19. The first T20I in Harare is on July 23. Four days is not enough for a support staff that has been on the road through Ireland and England to reset and travel to a different continent. The Asian Games situation is even more compressed. Cricket at Aichi-Nagoya runs from September 19 to October 3. India’s home white-ball series against the West Indies begins September 27. Gambhir stays with the senior squad for the West Indies assignments. Laxman travels to Japan. The calendar dictates it.
Hrishikesh Kanitkar serves as batting coach and Sunil Joshi as bowling coach for both tours, per TOI reports. The trio also worked with India A in their Tri-series campaign in Sri Lanka earlier this year.
This is not the first time the BCCI has structured things this way. When the senior coaching staff has been occupied or when the calendar has created overlaps, the board has turned to Laxman consistently. He led India in Ireland in 2022, winning the T20I series 2-0. He coached the Zimbabwe tour that same year, a 3-0 ODI sweep. He covered the 2022 Asia Cup when Dravid was unavailable and the New Zealand T20Is that followed. In December 2024, with Gambhir given a break after the T20 World Cup, Laxman took the team to South Africa and won the four-match T20I series 3-1.
The most significant of those stints came in 2023, when India participated in Asian Games cricket for the first time. The BCCI had long skipped the tournament due to scheduling conflicts. India did not send a team in 2010 or 2014. Cricket was dropped from the 2018 programme entirely. When it returned in Hangzhou in 2023 with full ICC international status, India went for the first time, under Laxman, while Dravid was in India with the ODI World Cup squad. They won gold. The final against Afghanistan was abandoned due to rain, with India awarded the medal on the basis of their superior ICC T20I ranking as the higher-seeded team. The 2026 edition in Aichi-Nagoya will be only India’s second appearance in Asian Games cricket.
Across all his interim stints in T20Is, Laxman has coached eight matches and won six, with one loss and one tie.
Laxman inherits a young side for Harare. Shreyas Iyer leads with Tilak Varma as vice-captain, and among the players earning maiden senior call-ups for Zimbabwe are wicketkeeper-batter Prabhsimran Singh and pacers Yash Thakur and Ashok Sharma. Mayank Yadav returns for the first time since October 2024.
🚨 News 🚨#TeamIndia squad announced for the 3️⃣-match T20I series against Zimbabwe.
More Details ▶️ https://t.co/sC19D5eW8y#ZIMvIND pic.twitter.com/ctbM5gFMtY
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 6, 2026
The coaching appointment comes alongside a separate development that gives it a different weight this time. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia confirmed on July 10 that the board will hold a review meeting with core members of the team after the ODI series against England concludes on July 19. Saikia was speaking to PTI from the ICC Annual Conference in Edinburgh. He described the review as being strictly about performance and course correction. He said no knee-jerk decisions would be made and that Gambhir’s position as head coach, which runs until the 2027 ODI World Cup, was not under immediate threat. The review will include an assessment of the wider support staff.
India have not won a T20I since lifting the World Cup in March. They lost to Ireland 0-2 in Belfast, the first bilateral T20I series defeat to Ireland in their history. England then won the series 3-0 with a match to spare, their first bilateral T20I series win over India in a series of more than two matches. India have lost five consecutive T20Is across both tours.
The trio of Laxman, Kanitkar, and Joshi are also likely to continue with the side for the Bangladesh white-ball series that follows the Asian Games, per TOI reports. No official BCCI confirmation on that has been issued at time of publication.
Sources
- India squad for the Tour of Zimbabwe, July 6, 2026 BCCI.tv
- VVS Laxman to coach Zimbabwe and Asian Games, July 7, 2026 Times of India / Yahoo Sports
- BCCI review meeting confirmed by Devajit Saikia to PTI, July 10, 2026 Business Standard
- India’s Asian Games cricket debut and gold, September-October 2023 Olympics.com
- Laxman interim coaching record India Fantasy
