Vice-captain is technically the second most important position in a team's squad with the captain obviously being the main man. While the skipper and head coach combine for a majority of the decision-making, the role of a deputy is no lesser. However, India's treatment of their vice-captains, at least in T20Is, has been interesting.
Axar Patel, who was named vice-captain in early 2025, saw himself out of the spot for no reason with Shubman Gill taking that spot in another equally outrageous move from the BCCI. It's clear to anybody who followed Indian cricket that Axar deserved to continue as vice-captain and in the same way, Gill didn't deserve to be back in the XI, let alone get vice-captaincy straight away.
All those selection mishaps have been done to death already, hence that isn't the point of this article. It is about the vice-captaincy jinx that seems to be hitting India's players. Gill, who was named Test and ODI captain in 2025, seemed to have locked the vice-captain role even if he had gotten that opportunity purely by chance.
An extended run of poor scores meant that Gill was likely to lose his spot but nobody had an idea that the Punjab batter would be axed from India's World Cup squad altogether. Never before has a team announced its World Cup squad by dropping their deputy captain just before the tournament. Axar found himself back in the role but once again, tragedy awaited him.
Axar played the first three games of India's T20 World Cup 2026 campaign before sitting out the final league encounter against Netherlands. It seemed like a move to rest the left-arm spinner but he wasn't picked once again in India's clash against South Africa in Ahmedabad on Sunday (February 22).
Apart from being the local boy, Axar would have been a handy presence on what seems like a dry black-soil surface. Suryakumar Yadav explained Axar's absence as a tactical move, possibly hinting at three left-handers in South Africa's top-seven but surely, your vice-captain is an elite player who should be immune to horses-for-courses policies? Clearly, India don't think that way.