India Recall Veteran Pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar for New Zealand T20I Series

Bhuvneshwar Kumar is set to wear the India jersey again after being included in the squad for the five T20Is against New Zealand later this month.

The veteran pacer has been away from the national side since November 2022, when he last featured in a T20I against New Zealand. As per the reports, his performances in IPL 2026 helped him secure a return to the team.

Playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Bhuvneshwar picked up 28 wickets from 16 games as the franchise retained its IPL crown. His tally was the second-best in the competition, with only Kagiso Rabada finishing ahead of him.

The Indian pacer was just one wicket short of Rabada, who claimed the Purple Cap. Bhuvneshwar also made an impact in the playoffs against Gujarat Titans, taking two wickets in Qualifier 1 before adding two more in the final.

Bhuvneshwar also had a good IPL 2025 season in which he picked up 17 wickets. Talking about major achievements, he is still the only bowler to win the Purple Cap in two straight IPL seasons.

Meanwhile, Varun Chakravarthy has also been brought back into the team after recovering from a side injury he picked up during the T20I series against Afghanistan in September. The problem forced him to miss the one-off T20I against Japan as well as the Asian Games.

Speaking about the exclusions, Ravi Bishnoi will not be part of the New Zealand series despite featuring in India’s squad for the current T20I series against the West Indies.

Apart from him, Hardik Pandya is also unavailable after picking up another shin injury towards the end of September. He was also ruled out of India A’s one-day games against Australia A because of the same issue. Meanwhile, Harshit Rana will miss the tour as well after suffering an injury during his recovery work in early September.

Besides this, there are no other changes to the squad, with the rest of the players from the West Indies T20I series keeping their places for the New Zealand matches.

India Squad for New Zealand T20I Series

Shreyas Iyer (c), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma, Axar Patel, Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Naman Dhir, Prince Yadav, Mayank Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Varun Chakravarthy and Kuldeep Yadav.