Rana, however, picked up a new injury while doing his rehab recently. He “was progressing well during his rehab at the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE). He sustained a rectus femoris strain while bowling during a match simulation on September 7 and has subsequently been ruled out,” a BCCI release said on Thursday.

Thakur, 27, made his T20I debut in July when he played two games in Zimbabwe and picked two wickets in each of them. He last played the Duleep Trophy semi-final for Central Zone against East Zone where he picked up three wickets in the first innings – including that of Ishan Kishan – and one more in the second, of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Thakur has also played four seasons of the IPL, two each for Lucknow Super Giants and Punjab Kings.

The Afghanistan T20Is will all be played in Delhi on September 13, 15 and 17 before the same T20I squad flies to Japan for the Asian Games. India will begin their campaign straight with the quarter-final on September 28 with the semi-finals scheduled for October 1 and the final on October 3.

India’s updated squad for Afghanistan T20Is

Shreyas Iyer (capt), Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Sanju Samson (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Tilak Varma (vice-capt), Shivam Dube, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Yash Thakur

India squad for the 2026 Asian Games

Shreyas Iyer (capt), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma (vice-capt), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Yash Thakur