The runs still favour Kohli and Rohit, but the 2027 question won’t go away

India won the first ODI at Edgbaston, and yet the two names everyone wanted to talk about afterwards had barely troubled the scorers. Virat Kohli went for 5, pinned lbw by Jofra Archer. Rohit Sharma made 11. The win was built by Axar Patel and a settled middle order, not by the pair who used to decide these games on their own. It was a footnote to a good night, but it reopened the question that trails this India side wherever it plays: how much road is left for Kohli and Rohit, and are they really part of the plan for 2027?

The framing matters here. This is the only format they play now. Both walked away from T20 internationals in 2024 and from Test cricket in 2025, so one-day cricket is the last stage either man has left. There is no other arena to judge them by, no red-ball form to fall back on. Every low score in an ODI now carries a weight it never used to, because it is the only score there is.

The case for keeping faith

Strip out the noise and look at what they have actually done lately, and the panic looks premature. Since the start of 2025, Kohli has been India’s leading ODI run-scorer, and Rohit has sat right behind him. Kohli’s returns in that stretch have come at an average north of 60, with hundreds still arriving in bunches. These are not two players hanging on. They are two players who remain, on the numbers, among the best fifty-over batters India have.

Ravichandran Ashwin put it plainly when he was asked whether the pair could make it to the next World Cup. He saw no reason why not, arguing that their experience of the conditions makes India stronger rather than weaker. It is hard to disagree while the runs keep coming. Form is form, and a cheap dismissal to a very good ball from Archer does not undo eighteen months of weight of runs.

The case for looking ahead

And yet the counter-argument does not go away, because of a number neither man can bat his way past: their age when the tournament actually starts. The 2027 World Cup runs from early October to late November that year, across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. By then Rohit will be 40 and Kohli will be about to turn, or just turned, 39. No side plans a World Cup around two batters that age without asking hard questions about what comes after.

India do not have an endless run of ODIs between now and that tournament to make up their minds, and it is not a lot of cricket to settle something this big. Gautam Gambhir, the head coach, has waved the question away more than once with a version of “stay in the present,” and you can see why. Commit publicly to the veterans and you box in the selectors; rule them out and you invite a circus every time a younger batter fails. The safest thing to say in a press conference is nothing.

Where I land on it

My view is that this should be decided by runs, and only runs. Dropping either man purely because of a birth certificate, while he is still outscoring the players meant to replace him, would be a strange way to build a team. If Kohli keeps averaging in the sixties, he has earned his seat, full stop. The moment the output dips, that is a different conversation, and it should be had honestly rather than dressed up as a farewell.

The awkward part is that both things can be true at once. India can lean on Kohli and Rohit for another year and more and still be quietly wrong to do it, if the price is a top order that has never learned to win without them. A team that cannot function when its two great seniors have an off day, the way it nearly did before Axar rescued Edgbaston, is a team that has put off a problem rather than solved it.

The next answers come quickly. There are ODIs in Cardiff and at Lord’s still to play in this series, and a run of fixtures after it. A couple of big scores and this debate goes quiet for a while. Another lean series and it will be back, louder, and no amount of “stay in the present” will hold it off.

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