India head coach Rahul Dravid recently said that the team management and selectors have narrowed down a group of “17-18 players” for the ODI World Cup 2023, which India will host in October-November.
After the Australia ODI series, India’s next ODI series in straight in August in West Indies, followed by the Asia Cup, and perhaps another series against South Africa/Australia at home before the World Cup 2023.
So there aren’t many ODI series, in particular at home, left for India to try and test more players. Dravid reckoned India’s squad for the World Cup 2023 will mostly be from this slate of 17-18 players.
So we thought why not brainstorm a bit and try to recognize these players, from which the 15-member World Cup 2023 squad will be selected.
Barring any injury, these 10 players are the certainties in India’s World Cup 2023 squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah
The players who seem closer to others for getting into the 15-member squad are: Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, and Yuzvendra Chahal
These fringe players will be competing with other fringe players for the spot in the 15-member World Cup 2023 squad.
Can Sanju Samson make it into India’s World Cup 2023 squad?
Even though he’s not in the ODI squad for the Australia series, Sanju Samson could well be competing strongly with Ishan Kishan as the backup keeper, despite the fact that Samson has been used in the middle-order while Kishan is considered as the back-up opener, but even Kishan has been out of form since his double century in Bangladesh. The form in the IPL 2023 will be crucial for both Samson and Kishan.
Samson had a good 2022 for India, but got injured at the start of 2023
Also, Prasidh Krishna (currently injured) and Umran Malik are two players who the management can ponder over bringing in the ODI setup as both have been used as middle-overs enforcers whenever they have played for India in ODIs.
