The 31-year-old Shreyas Iyer began his T20I captaincy with a loss to Ireland in the opening T20I on Friday. This was the first time that the Men in Blue had lost any game to the Irish side in international cricket. Iyer was handed the captaincy after the selectors were impressed with his leadership skills in the IPL.

Former England skipper Michael Vaughan was recently speaking to veteran India batter Ajinkya Rahane on the latter’s YouTube channel. During the course of the show, Vaughan took a hilarious dig at Sreyas and Ricky Ponting. The captain and coach duo have enjoyed a great rapport with each other, first at the Delhi Capitals and currently in the Punjab Kings.

“When I heard about Shreyas becoming captain for the first time, Ifelt Ponting would be the coach.

Both of them come as a pair. He is a very good batter and captain, which shows the amount of depth that Indian cricket has in T20 cricket in particular.” Indian selectors decided to axe Suryakumar Yadav as the captain due to his poor batting form.

The 35-year-old had led India with great distinction, having won the 2025 Asia Cup and 2026 T20 World Cup.

Suryakumar ended his captaincy stint with a win percentage of 82, which is one of the best by any Indian captain.

Ex-India star calls out poor batting performance

Former Indian batter Aakash Chopra expressed his displeasure with the Indian batting unit in the first game. The 48-year-old said on his YouTube channel, “Abhishek batted as though there were no problems; wickets kept falling at the other end.

It looked like each batter thought someone else would take the onus of scoring runs.”

“This attitude can come about when a team plays a lower-ranked side. India had never lost to Ireland before in their previous eight games, and this was their first loss. Shot selection has to be questioned; none of the batters played responsibly, that is the problem,” said the former opening batter.

Chopra also opined, “Team India could have gone in with an extra bowler rather than having their batting till number nine.

If that had happened, Ireland wouldn’t have scored 180 odd on the board. Team management has to ask themselves questions. The effort seen yesterday was very ordinary.”