Gill inherits the wealth of India's Rohit-Kohli era

Which is the greatest team in ODI history?

It's a difficult question, but not because there are too many plausibly "correct" answers. It's difficult because there are, when you boil it down, just two equally compelling ones: Clive Lloyd's West Indies and Ricky Ponting's Australia, both winners of back-to-back World Cup titles, and both of whom won upwards of three times as many ODIs as they lost.

Lloyd and Ponting's respective win-loss ratios of 3.555 and 3.235, in fact, are the best and third-best of all captains to have led ODI teams at least 20 times.

Best and... third-best? Yes, because Rohit Sharma's India sit right between them at 3.500, with 42 wins and 12 losses in 56 matches.

Rohit's India didn't dominate world cricket for anywhere near as long as the other two teams did, and though they achieved a 15-1 record over two global tournaments, they happened to lose that one match on November 19, 2023. But just the fact that they can be discussed alongside the two ODI GOAT teams tells you how good Rohit's India were.

Were.

We'll have to get used to speaking of Rohit's ODI team in simple past tense, because it's now Shubman Gill's team. At 26, he is now captain in two international formats, vice-captain in the third, and in every way the face of Indian cricket.

Well, almost. Because over the last week or so, the face that has dominated television promos for India's upcoming ODI series in Australia hasn't been Gill's or even Rohit's but that of Virat Kohli. Even ads for the Women's World Cup have referenced Kohli and the shirt number 18 he shares with Smriti Mandhana.

It's been nearly four years since he last captained India in any format, and he's retired from two of them, but we remain, in some ways, in the era of Virat Kohli. And we remain, in other ways, in the era of Rohit Sharma. And these are cricketing ways too, because Kohli won India matches in inimitably Kohli ways the last time India played ODIs, finishing among the top run-getters in the Champions Trophy, and Rohit won India the final in an inimitably Rohit way.

It's no surprise that Kohli and Rohit are still in India's ODI squad, even though Ajit Agarkar and his selection panel have made it clear they're prepared for a future without either. They may not be playing the other two formats, but that's no reason to leave them out of the one where they've shown little sign of slowing down, and the one in which they're both undisputed all-time greats.

India have explosive openers, like Abhishek Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal, who could potentially take Rohit's place; but there's little evidence as of now that they can do in 50-over games, against two new balls, what they do in T20s against one. India have candidates for the No. 3 role, but can any of them accumulate risk-free runs in pressure situations while still somehow ticking along at a run a ball like Kohli has continued to do into his mid-30s?

It's a tricky time for both, though, because who plays ODIs anymore? Since the start of 2024, India have only played 11, the joint fewest of any team alongside Ireland. India will play nine across the 2025-26 season - three in Australia in October, and then three each against South Africa and New Zealand at home - but nothing, as of now, between January 18 and July 14 when they play the first of three ODIs in England.

Gaps like this are increasingly the norm for most teams. India themselves haven't played an ODI since the Champions Trophy final on March 9. How are Kohli and Rohit going to handle these gaps, given that ODIs and the IPL are pretty much the only cricket they now play? How keen will they be to play domestic cricket just to keep themselves match-fit and match-sharp? How will they sustain this sort of life for two full years before the next ODI World Cup in Africa in October 2027, when Kohli will be a month away from his 38th birthday and Rohit already 40?

And given how intermittently India will play ODIs in the period leading up to that World Cup, they could find themselves juggling two competing desires. They want to make the most of what Rohit and Kohli still have to give; they also want to give other batters a run in the side in case a need arises for someone to step into the outsize shoes of either or both come the World Cup. How do they do both these things at the same time?

They could have managed it in, say, the two-year period leading up to the 2011 World Cup. Like they did by resting Sachin Tendulkar frequently in that period, during which he only played 38% of India's ODIs. But that 38% amounted to 22 matches across which he averaged 66.05. No one plays ODIs at anywhere near that frequency anymore.

And because of this, it could be a tricky time for Gill too. He's already having to navigate being one of a shrinking band of international players who play all three formats. Now, with leadership roles in all three, he may not get too many opportunities to take breaks.

And as an ODI captain leading a team that may not play the format all that often, he may not have a lot of time between now and October 2027 to formulate and put in place any vision he may have of what a Shubman Gill ODI XI is, and how he wants it to play. And while he figures it out, he'll have two ex-captains batting either side of him.

But as challenging as any of that may sound, this might actually be the best time for a new captain to take over the ODI side. Rohit hands over to Gill a team so dominant they made a place for themselves between Lloyd's West Indies and Ponting's Australia. He hands over a team whose last act in ODIs was to win the Champions Trophy without coming close to dropping a game.

Above all, he hands over a team of fearsome quality and experience. Even if you take away Rohit and Kohli, Gill has Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj by his side, among other established names, and a seemingly endless list of young players with high ceilings knocking on the door.

This, then, is the crux of it, and it's been the case with India's ODI team over at least the last three years: they have worries, certainly, but only until they look at the ones other teams are dealing with.