S.Viswanadh, T.T.V.Namboori and more: Explaining why Indian players have unfamiliar names at Asian Games 2026 originally appeared on Cricket News . Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
Sony Liv's scorecard for India's Asian Games matches showed unfamiliar names such as TTV Namboori, WS Mani Sundar and S Viswanadh, which confused many fans.
The names were not errors, because they are the full legal names of Tilak Varma, Washington Sundar and Sanju Samson.
Multi-sport events follow Olympic Council of Asia and IOC naming rules, which record athletes by registered names, often taken from passports.
S Viswanadh, TTV Namboori and WS Mani Sundar are not names most Indian cricket followers would recognise, yet all three appeared on the scorecard during India's Asian Games 2026 semifinal against Sri Lanka.
The explanation, as it turns out, is straightforward, and it has nothing to do with a broadcasting mistake.
India won the second semifinal by a margin of 124 runs after setting Sri Lanka a target of 170, but the result was partly overshadowed by the graphics shown by the official broadcaster, Sony Liv.
Once India's innings had ended, in which Ishan Kishan made a superb 80 off 46 balls and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi contributed 38, two names that few viewers had ever heard before were displayed on the screen. The pictures spread rapidly across social media, and the broadcaster drew criticism for what many assumed was a careless error.
Neither name referred to a new player as "TTV Namboori" stood for Tilak Varma, whose full name is Namboori Thakur Tilak Varma, while "WS Mani Sundar" was an abbreviated form of Washington Sundar's full name, in which Mani Sundar is the name of the cricketer's father. In other words, both players were simply listed under the names recorded in their official documents.
A similar instance was noticed before India's innings had finished, when the name of Sanju Samson was replaced by "S Viswanadh" on the scorecard. Viswanath is in fact the actual middle name of Samson, who was born in Trivandrum, so the listing followed the same pattern as the other two.
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The use of full names at the Asian Games is not a slip by the broadcaster but a result of the standard registration procedures followed at major multi-sport events.
The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) work to official naming policies, under which athletes are generally registered with their legal names as submitted at accreditation, frequently drawn from passport details. This information is then placed in centralised databases used for event operations and broadcasting.
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Bilateral cricket series usually identify players by their familiar names or sporting identities, but a multi-sport event needs one consistent system across many disciplines.
Such an approach keeps television graphics, digital scoreboards and official reports uniform, even if it leaves cricket fans briefly puzzled when a well-known player appears under a name they have never seen in print.
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After India beat Pakistan to win the gold medal in the final of the 2026 Asian Games, Varma took to social media with a post listing the names they had been referred to during the tournament's broadcast.
T.T.V Namboori remained unbeaten on 51 runs while S. Vishwanadh managed just two runs. W.S Mani Sundar did not bat, however, posted figures of 2/29 in his four overs.
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