Confirmed injury and replacement list
Confirmed: New Zealand Cricket said on 10 October that Will O’Rourke will miss the upcoming India tour as a precaution while he rehabilitates left hamstring and calf injuries. The board’s update is about the ODI and Test portions; it should not be reported as a T20I withdrawal unless a newer notice says so.
Confirmed: Mark Chapman has a hamstring injury and Zak Foulkes has a hip-flexor complaint. The ICC and New Zealand Cricket confirmed that both will miss the five-match T20I series against India. All-rounder Josh Clarkson and fast bowler Blair Tickner have been called into the 16-member T20I squad.
What the India series schedule says
The T20I series begins in Christchurch on 22 October, followed by matches in Christchurch on 24 October, Wellington on 27 October, Auckland on 30 October and Hamilton on 1 November. India’s BCCI announcement confirms the same five-match schedule and names Shreyas Iyer as captain of the T20I squad.
India’s announced squad includes 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 Chakaravarthy and Kuldeep Yadav alongside Iyer. That is the confirmed squad, not a match-day XI.
Why the update matters for India
New Zealand now have to reshape their T20I balance without Chapman and Foulkes, while O’Rourke’s longer-format absence changes the build-up to the ODI and Test legs. Clarkson gives the T20I group another all-round option and Tickner adds pace depth, but neither replacement is an automatic selection.
Google Trends India showed “New Zealand vs India” peaking at 100 on 6 October, with breakout related searches for the 2026 T20 squad and India–New Zealand squad lists. The exact Will O’Rourke query returned insufficient data, so this article does not claim a player-name search spike.
