My squad for World Cup 2027

Let's address the elephant in the stadium: the 2027 World Cup is still comfortably over a year away, which in cricket-selection terms is roughly the distance between "reasonable planning" and "certified lunatic with a spreadsheet." And yet, here we are. Because that's the thing about being a fan with a plan — you don't wait for the selectors to do their job. You beat them to it, sharpen your pencil, and build the squad you'd pick if BCCI accidentally left the group chat open and handed you the keys.

So here's the pool: 25 players, filtered down from a nation with more batting depth than sense of restraint. Eleven of them form the First XI. Four more complete a travelling squad of fifteen. Eleven others make up a Second Choice XI — not "reserves who carry the drinks," but a legitimate mirror-image team built to replicate the First XI's exact skill profile, position for position. And three final names sit in the wings as pure insurance policies — one batting cover, one pace cover, one spin cover — for the day the universe decides your top two choices in a role are both simultaneously unavailable.

Twenty-five names. Every one of them earning their place for a reason. Let's walk through it.

The First XI: Your Green-Lit Starting Eleven

This is the team that walks out on opening day, assuming health, form, and the cricketing gods all cooperate — a big "assuming," but that's what depth is insurance against.

The Top Order: Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill (captain) open, because if it isn't broken, don't just avoid fixing it — actively worship it. Virat Kohli follows at three, still doing what Virat Kohli does, which is turning "chasing 280" into a personal art installation. Shreyas Iyer, as vice-captain, anchors the middle order — a role he's made his own with the calm of a man who has decided panic is for other people.

Behind the Stumps: Ishan Kishan gets the gloves. The rationale isn't just the keeping — it's the left-hand variety he injects into a middle order that could otherwise get monotonously right-handed, plus the strike-rate he brings when the innings needs someone to stop being polite about the bowling.

The All-Round Engine Room: Axar Patel and Hardik Pandya occupy the "Complete AR" slots — players who can win you a match with bat or ball, not just contribute respectably with both. Ravindra Jadeja slots in as the Bowling AR: a spinner first, sure, but one whose batting has bailed India out of enough corners that "just a bowler" stopped being an accurate description years ago. Between these three, India covers its all-round spin department entirely through multi-skilled players rather than a specialist tweaker — which is also why you won't find a pure spinner in this XI. When Axar and Jadeja are both bowling their overs and contributing runs, you don't need a third spin option cluttering the XI.

The Pace Battery: Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, and Mohammed Siraj make up the seam attack — Bhuvi's control and seam movement up front, Bumrah doing whatever it is Bumrah does that defies conventional biomechanics, and Siraj as the relentless, high-energy third seamer who never lets an over feel like a breather for the batter.

That's your eleven: four specialist batters, one keeper-batter, three all-rounders covering both bat and spin duties, and three pacers. A balanced, battle-tested unit.

The Final Four: Completing the 15

A World Cup squad isn't just an XI — it's an XI plus the four names who turn a starting team into a travelling insurance policy. These aren't afterthoughts; each one is the direct, ready-made replacement for a specific First XI player.

• KL Rahul (captain, backup keeper) — the deputy gloveman, and importantly, a middle-order option in his own right if Ishan Kishan has an off tournament or an off ankle.
• Mohammed Shami — the fourth seamer, a proven big-tournament performer who can walk into any of the three pace slots without the attack skipping a beat.
• Kuldeep Yadav — and here's the interesting one. The First XI carries zero specialist spinners, relying entirely on Axar and Jadeja for tweaked overs. Kuldeep is the squad's insurance against a wicket that suddenly demands genuine mystery spin, or a tournament stretch where the ball just isn't turning enough for all-rounders alone.
• Shivam Dube — the power-hitting Batting AR, there to inject some left-handed muscle into the middle overs and give the think-tank a finishing option that doesn't rely purely on the top four getting it right.

Fifteen names. A squad that's balanced on paper and, more importantly, balanced in personality — swagger up top, control in the middle, chaos (the good kind) at the death.

The Second Choice XI: A Carbon Copy, Not a Consolation Prize

Here's where the planning gets genuinely clever. Rather than assembling "the next 11 best players" as a random grab-bag, this is a Second XI built to replicate the exact same skill architecture as the first — a shadow team that could theoretically take the field tomorrow and not look like a downgrade in balance, even if it's a downgrade in reputation (for now).

• Yashasvi Jaiswal & Vaibhav Sooryavanshi open — the swashbuckling twenty-something answer to Rohit and Gill, all raw intent and minimal fear.
• Sanju Samson (vice-captain, keeper option) bats at three, doubling as a keeping alternative in this XI's own right.
• Tilak Varma holds the middle order together — composed beyond his years, in the Shreyas Iyer mould.
• KL Rahul (captain) — yes, he appears here too, because a genuine like-for-like backup for a specialist keeper-batter is rare enough that the same man plausibly leads both squads' depth chart.
• Shivam Dube and Washington Sundar cover the all-round bases, Harshit Rana provides the Bowling AR spark in Pandya/Jadeja's mould.
• Kuldeep Yadav again does spin-cover duty, while Mohammed Shami and Prince Yadav round out an entirely credible pace attack.

Notice something: Rahul, Dube, Shami, and Kuldeep aren't just Second XI members — they're the very four who complete the 15-man squad. Which makes sense once you think about it: the closest replacement for a First XI player, by definition, is often good enough to travel with the senior squad rather than sit at home waiting for a phone call.

The Reserve Trio: Break Glass in Case of Emergency

Beyond the 22 players spread across both XIs sit three specialists — not part of either playing eleven, but insurance for a very specific kind of crisis:

• Rajat Patidar — the batting reserve, ready to step in if the middle order needs a fresh face with red-hot domestic form.
• Arshdeep Singh — the pace reserve, left-arm variety in the pocket if conditions or workload demand a fourth seam option beyond Shami.
• Varun Chakravarthy — the spin reserve, mystery variations held in cold storage for a pitch that turns square and a moment that needs something the primary spin-bowling all-rounders can't quite conjure.

This is the "25" complete: 11 + 11 + 3.

The Skillset Ledger

Slice the 25 by role instead of by team, and the balance becomes even clearer:

Role	Count	Players
Wicketkeepers	3	Ishan Kishan, KL Rahul, Sanju Samson
Specialist Batters	8	Gill, Rohit, Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Jaiswal, Vaibhav, Tilak Varma, Patidar
Pacers	6	Bumrah, Siraj, Bhuvi, Shami, Arshdeep, Prince Yadav
Spinners	2	Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy
Complete All-Rounders	2	Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel
Batting All-Rounders	2	Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar
Bowling All-Rounders	2	Ravindra Jadeja, Harshit Rana

Add it up and you get 25 — a squad that's batting-heavy by design (eight specialist batters is no accident, given how many ODI run-chases turn into nerve-shredders), pace-rich (six seamers reflects modern ODI cricket's obsession with variety and reverse swing), and deliberately thin on specialist spin, because when your all-rounders can turn the ball themselves, you don't need to carry passengers.

The "Replacement for the Replacement" List

Even the best-laid squads need a Plan C, because injuries in cricket have the comedic timing of a poorly-written sitcom — they always strike the week before the big event. So, four names sit just outside the 25, ready to be summoned if the injury list gets genuinely alarming:

• Mayank Yadav — for when the pace reserves need a reserve, and raw, borderline-unfair speed is the requirement.
• Sai Sudharsan — left-handed batting cover, for balance in the middle order if the lefties above him are unavailable.
• Ruturaj Gaikwad — the elegant right-handed batting option, classical technique as a fallback for the top or middle order.
• Nitish Reddy — batting all-rounder depth, for when even the all-rounder cupboard looks bare.

None of these four are in the 25 — think of them as names pencilled into the margins, visible only if you squint at the depth chart hard enough. But that's the whole point of planning this early: by the time 2027 actually arrives, half these calls will look prophetic, and the other half will be cheerfully, spectacularly wrong. Either way, it's more fun than waiting for the selectors to catch up.

Hopefully, by the time the action begins in South Africa, we will get to see most (if not all) of them in action. And most importantly, in getting the Cup home.
Jai Ho!