The World Test Championship (WTC) is only a couple of cycles old, but in both the cycles that have taken place so far, India has reached the final of the championship both times.
During the first ever World Test Championship, India had faced New Zealand in the final under the captaincy of Virat Kohli and now they are going to face Australia in the upcoming WTC final starting from 7th of June, under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma.
Here is India’s strongest possible XI for the World Test Championship final against Australia –
Openers (Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill)
If no fitness concerns, Rohit Sharma will open the batting with Shubman Gill, as KL Rahul is injured and not available. If KL was available, even then probably Shubman would have opened and KL would have played in the middle order as a wicketkeeper batsman.
While Shubman hasn’t had a great record in England as an opening batsman, Rohit had a great time the last time he played a test series in England. The Indian skipper would want to replicate that in WTC final.
Middle order (Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane)
The middle order of Pujara, Kohli and Rahane has been the mainstay for India in test match cricket for quite sometime now and it’s because of them that India has been able to perform so consistently overseas since 2014 when Kohli took over as captain.
Rahane and Pujara have been dropped as well recently because of their lack of form, but they are back in the fold again and India would want them to score heavily in WTC final.
Wicketkeeper and allrounders (KS Bharat, Ravindra Jadeja and Shardul Thakur)
In the absence of Rishabh Pant, KS Bharat would be the automatic choice as India’s wicketkeeper. Ishan Kishan is in the team as well, but he hasn’t made his test debut yet and it’s highly unlikely that he will be handed his test cap straight in the WTC final.
Ravindra Jadeja and Shardul Thakur will be the two allrounders India will go with and apart from scoring some runs with the bat lower down the order, the job of these two allrounders will be to bowl tight spells when the ball gets old.
Bowlers (Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj)
While Siraj and Shami will be the first choice seam bowlers for India keeping the English conditions in mind, Jaydev Unadkat will probably get the nod ahead of Umesh Yadav because he is a left armer and can bowl with both new and old ball.
Another important quality of Unadkat is apart from being a strike bowler, he can also bowl long holding spells if the captain wants.
