Vineet Saxena with Rajat Bhatia [Source: @SpotOnEntertai1/x]Vineet Saxena has been appointed as the batting coach of the India A team for the ongoing warm-up fixtures of the ICC T20 World Cup 2026. With India A trouncing USA in the first warm-up game on February 2, Saxena will now coach the side for the upcoming second match against Namibia. The India A cricket team, led by Delhi’s Ayush Badoni, will face Namibia in the final warm-up match of the 2026 T20 World Cup on February 6. The match will be hosted by the BCCI Centre of Excellence Ground 1 in Bengaluru. As Vineet Saxena braces himself to join the India A squad in a high-profile coaching role, here is a look at his past history with Indian cricket. Who is Vineet Saxena? Vineet Saxena is a former Indian cricketer who has played extensively for the Rajasthan and Uttarakhand cricket teams. He made his competitive cricket debut back during the 1998-99 Indian domestic season as a teenager. Born in Goa back in December 1980, Vineet Saxena spent seven seasons with the Rajasthan cricket team between late 1998 and early 2005. He subsequently joined Railways for the 2005-06 season, before spending the next decade of his career with Uttarakhand cricket. The prolific right-handed batter played 129 first-class matches, aggregating 7,637 runs in the process from 223 innings at an average of 36.89. The cricketer plundered 17 hundreds and 38 half-centuries in his near two-decade long career. Vineet also played 22 List A games, and a handful of T20 matches to aggregate 770 runs across both white-ball formats in 26 innings. He last played any form of competitive cricket back in January 2019 during the conclusion of the 2018-19 domestic season. Vineet Saxena’s past coaching gig It is worth noting that Vineet Saxena has had prior coaching experience with Indian cricket. Back in May 2024 a couple of years ago, the former domestic cricketer was appointed as the batting coach by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Saxena was tasked to helm a high-performance camp for Under-19 cricketers at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He also served the India A team as its batting coach in late-2024 for the 2024 Duleep Trophy. India A schedule for T20 World Cup 2026 The India A cricket team will now face Namibia in the final warm-up fixture of the 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. The match will be played at the BCCI CoE in Bengaluru on February 6, i.e., just a day prior to the launch of the showpiece event in the country. India A blanked USA by 38 runs at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai earlier this month. The match held significant importance for comeback man Tilak Varma, considering the star Indian international is set to join Team India for the 2026 T20 World Cup later this week. With Varma in the focus, opening batter Narayan Jagadeesan (104 off 55) and captain Ayush Badoni (60 off 26) hogged the limelight with the bat as India A mounted 238-3 in 20 overs. In turn, bowlers Ravi Bishnoi, Naman Dhir and Khaleel Ahmed kept USA down to just 200 all out.
