Australian head coach Andrew McDonald has asked for a bigger squad size for the 2027 ODI World Cup after the International Cricket Council revamped the format of next year's edition earlier this month.
The revamped structure of the tournament sees the number of participating teams increase to 14, which is four more than the the teams that played in the 2023 World Cup. Additionally there will be a Super Series round before the group stages and a new Super 7 before the semi-finals.
At the 2023 ODI World Cup, the two finalists ended up playing 11 matches which included nine league games, the semi-final and the final. Under the new format for the 2027 ODI World Cup which will be jointly hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, the two finalists will have to play a minimum of 13 games including five group games, six Super 7 matches, the semi-final and the final.
Australia, the most successful team in the history of the ODI World Cups, has for the longest time been in favour of big squads for the tournament in order to manage injuries. Earlier this year the team was severely plagued with injuries during the T20 World Cup which saw the withdrawal of pace duo of Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood along with batting all-rounder Matthew Short. The team ended up exiting the tournament after the group stage.
In an interview to SEN radio, McDonald stuck to his stance of teams having bigger squads for the 2027 World Cup as there will be more matches played in the same time span of the 2023 World Cup.
"One of the big things from my perspective is if it's going to be your pinnacle event, what do your squad sizes look like?" McDonald said. "We had the dilemma of what it looked like having a 15-player squad for the last World Cup, and I think New Zealand were in the same boat where we had a couple of injuries."
"Travis Head been the most notable one, and I think Kane Williamson and a couple of others for New Zealand, where you end up with sort of 12-13 players to select from early on in your tournament, and you're trying to carry those other players through the early rounds, and you're not able to play potentially the way that you want to play, or structure up the way that you think you need to, and in particular in countries where you in the north or the south or the east or the west, the conditions change quite significantly," he explained.
Head suffered a finger injury in the build up to the 2023 World Cup but the team management decided not to replace the opener. Head eventually recovered and hit a match-winning hundred in the final. The ICC mandates that a player cannot be left out of the 15-man squad and return halfway through the tournament in place of another unless they come in as an injury replacement that is approved by the tournament's technical committee.
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McDonald wants the squad for the World Cup to have 17 players and has cited the example of the FIFA World Cup which allows the team to have 26 members in the squad despite having only 11 on-field players.
"I think there's an argument to say, great, you've put more games in front of us, give us larger squads, allow us to play the way that we need to play within those conditions, and then also you've got the ability to carry those potential stars of the game that are under injury clouds leading in because the cricket leading into the World Cup is demanding, so you're going to have some people that potentially are 50-50 at that point in time" he said.
At this stage there ICC is expected to stick to the rule of having 15 players in the squad while ensuring that every team gets at least two days of break between its matches.
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