Will Virat And Rohit play The 2027 ODI World Cup: The Indian Cricket Team is currently on a high after finishing the 2025 Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy against England with a 2-2 scoreline. The thrilling series not only showed the character of this Indian team but also saw several young players step up and perform under pressure.
Young Test captain Shubman Gill not only led the team to a draw against a formidable opponent but was also the Player of the Series and its highest run scorer, breaking several records throughout these five matches. Pacer Akash Deep stepped up big time in the regular absence of the likes of Jasprit Bumrah and played a major role in the first three Tests.
Yashasvi Jaiswal, Was, Prasidh Krishna, Washington Sundar, and Sai Sudharsan all had their moments. More senior players like Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, and KL Rahul also showed that they’ve still got it.
However, despite many heroes emerging for the Indian Cricket Team during this series, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma were the center of attention at several points over the past two months. Their massive shadows loomed over the current Indian Team, and their absence from the Test side was felt in more ways than one.
Two of the biggest names in world cricket, Kohli and Sharma, quietly announced their retirement from Test cricket earlier this year. That came after India’s disappointing 3-1 defeat in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. And after they retired from T20Is after winning the 2024 T20 World Cup, they only remained active in ODIs on the international level.
Will Virat And Rohit play The 2027 ODI World Cup?
So, the question now is, will they play the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa, which will supposedly be their last international cricket outing? While both men have alluded to the fact that they wish to play in the next ODI World Cup, there are a few factors that can stop them from doing so.
First is the lack of an ODI schedule over the next two years. Before the 50-over World Cup in 2027, India will only play 12 ODIs. They’ll first play three against Australia at home in October 2025, then three against South Africa at home in November-December. In 2026, they will face New Zealand at home in three ODIs at home in January and take on England in another three away in July.
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have not played any international cricket since the ICC Champions Trophy earlier this year. They will only play 12 matches over the next 18 months or so. Questions will surely loom over the two, including whether they will be rusty by the time the World Cup arrives.
Another reason to question whether they’ll play in 2027 is how veterans like them have historically been treated. After India won the 2007 T20 World Cup, between that time and the 2011 ODI World Cup, many Indian legends like Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, and VVS Laxman either retired from limited-overs cricket or left international cricket entirely. This was possible because of the emergence of younger stars in the Indian Cricket Team.
Today, we have already discussed that the national team not only has a lot of young stars, but that they have also stepped up to perform at the highest level. As a replacement for two legendary batters in Virat and Rohit, India has the likes of Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, and Sai Sudharsan. Several batters who weren’t part of the England series can also step in. Players like Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma are yet to do great things on the international stage. Meanwhile, Shreyas Iyer was the highest run scorer of CT 2025.
With all that being said, it is very likely that not only Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, the latter of them being the Indian Cricket Team captain in the ODIs, want to play the 2027 ODI World Cup and will get in shape to do so, but also the BCCI will want to keep these two around and give them a proper farewell after India hopefully wins the trophy that eluded them at home in 2023.
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