Andrew McDonald wants 17-man World Cup squads, and the 2027 calendar backs him up
Australia’s coach has asked the ICC to raise the World Cup squad limit from 15 to 17, and the maths of a 13-match tournament makes it hard to argue with.
Aug 1, 2026
Andrew McDonald has asked the ICC a question nobody running the 2027 World Cup seems keen to answer out loud. If this is meant to be the pinnacle event of the 50-over game, why is a team still allowed only 15 players to get through it?
Australia’s head coach wants that limit raised to 17 for the tournament in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and he made the case on SEN radio on Wednesday in the flat, practical register he tends to use when he is annoyed about something. “This is going to be a pinnacle event,” he said. “Give us larger squads, allow us to play the way that we need to play.”
The arithmetic has changed and the squad size has not
Australia won the 2023 World Cup by playing 11 matches: nine in the round robin, then a semi-final and a final. The team that wins in 2027 will have played at least 13, and possibly 15. Five group games, six in the Super 7 round, then the knockouts. The tournament itself runs from 4 October to 21 November, which is roughly the same window the 2023 edition occupied. Two or four extra matches, squeezed into the same number of weeks, played by the same number of cricketers.
Fifteen players was a tight allocation for 11 matches. For 13 it is close to a dare. Lose a quick in week two and you are picking from whoever is left for a month.
Australia already know what 15 feels like when it goes wrong
McDonald has lived through the version of this that worked, which is probably why he is willing to say it out loud. Travis Head fractured his hand against South Africa weeks before the 2023 tournament. Australia picked him in the 15 anyway, knowing he would miss the first half, and effectively went into the World Cup with 14 available players rather than surrender the slot. They also declined to carry a second specialist spinner and trusted Adam Zampa to stay fit.
Both gambles came off. Head returned with a hundred off 59 balls and then made 137 in the final at Ahmedabad. It is remembered as bold selection. McDonald’s argument is that it should not have to be a gamble at all, and that a bigger squad lets a team “carry those potential stars of the game that are under injury clouds leading in”.
The football comparison is doing a lot of work
His sharpest line borrowed from another sport. FIFA allowed 26-player squads at the World Cup that finished in New Jersey a fortnight ago, for a game with 11 on the field, and Spain won it in eight matches. Cricket asks for 13 to 15 matches from 15 players.
The workload behind the ask is real, and it is specifically Australian. They are scheduled to play somewhere in the region of 20 Tests in the 14 months before the World Cup begins, including five in India in January and February and then the Ashes in England from 18 June. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Marnus Labuschagne and Alex Carey are all likely to be in most of that and then be wanted in South Africa. Cameron Green is the only one of the core group under 30. The three frontline quicks have already missed a Champions Trophy and a T20 World Cup between them to injury, personal reasons and retirement.
The ICC is not expected to move
The ICC is expected to hold the limit at 15 and offer a guaranteed minimum two-day gap between matches instead. That is a scheduling concession rather than a selection one, and it does not help a captain whose reserve seamer has a side strain in Bulawayo.
McDonald also raised something quieter about the format, suggesting the Associate nations “have probably been penalised a little bit” by a structure that was pitched as opening the door to more of them. That one is worth its own argument. But on squad sizes he is asking for two extra players, which is about as modest as a demand gets from a coach who has already won this thing once.