VVS Laxman to take charge of India at the Asian Games as Gambhir stays back

India will be coached by VVS Laxman in Japan after the BCCI split its support staff across two assignments that fall in the same fortnight

VVS Laxman will take charge of India's men's team at the 2026 Asian Games, with head coach Gautam Gambhir remaining at home to prepare the senior side for its one-day series against West Indies. The arrangement was settled at the BCCI's performance review meeting in Mumbai on 3 September.

The two commitments sit almost on top of one another. The cricket competition at the Asian Games begins on 24 September and runs to the gold-medal match on 3 October, while the first ODI against West Indies is scheduled for 27 September. Splitting the group was the only way to give both squads a full coaching staff.

Laxman, who heads the BCCI's Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, has been handed the role before, and delivered.

A calendar that could not be reconciled

India's home series against West Indies runs from 27 September to 17 October and takes in three ODIs and five T20Is, a programme that occupies the head coach for the entire duration of the Asian Games.

The men's tournament in Japan opens on 24 September with a preliminary qualifying phase, and India, seeded directly into the later rounds, are not scheduled to play until the quarter-final stage at the end of the month.

That leaves a team in Japan and a team at home needing preparation at the same time, in different formats, on opposite sides of the continent. Rather than thin one staff across both, the board built a second one.

Familiar ground for Laxman

This is not an improvised appointment. Laxman coached India's men at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, where the team won gold, and has led India on several assignments since when Rahul Dravid and later Gambhir were unavailable.

His day job makes him the natural fit. As the man in charge of the Centre of Excellence, he works with much of the fringe and emerging group that a multi-sport games squad draws on, and has seen more of them at close quarters than the senior staff has.

The Hangzhou assignment also gives the BCCI a precedent for how a games squad is run: a short tournament, a compressed schedule and a group that mixes senior names with players the selectors want to look at in a competitive setting.

The staff travelling to Japan

Laxman will be supported by former India spinner Sunil Joshi, along with Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Subhadeep Ghosh, a group drawn largely from the domestic and age-group system rather than the senior setup.

India's women, who compete in the same games, continue under Amol Muzumdar. Their preparation is unaffected by the split, since the senior men's series is the only fixture creating the clash.

What Gambhir stays behind for

The West Indies series is the more consequential of the two assignments in pure cricketing terms. It is India's first extended block of home one-day cricket in a stretch that the board has openly framed around the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Gambhir will also have the senior batting group in front of him for the first time since the review meeting, at which the futures of several long-serving one-day players were discussed.

The Asian Games squad, by contrast, is a T20 side, and one built around players the selectors want to see in a tournament environment rather than the first-choice one-day XI.

The board also confirmed at the same meeting that it will not create a director of cricket role, leaving the coaching structure as it stands rather than adding a layer above Gambhir.

Gold in Hangzhou three years ago came with an Asian Games title India will now defend without their head coach, and with a staff that has done it before.

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