Former India player turned commentator Aakash Chopra has said that Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s lack of First-class cricket could work against his inclusion in India’s 2027 ODI World Cup squad. He also stated that the swing bowler’s workload has been limited lately, as he has been playing only T20 cricket. While Bhuvneshwar has been playing for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru for the last two editions of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Shami hasn’t played a First-class game since January 2024 and a List A match since December 2023 as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel, ‘Aakash Chopra,’ he said: “One thing goes against Bhuvi. I love him to bits, and I want him to play for India again, but when you don’t play Ranji, your workload becomes limited. There are a handful of matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. In ODI cricket, you have to bowl 10 overs and field for 50 overs in a match. It’s a lot of workload.”
“It’s not easy in a tournament like the World Cup where you have to keep playing continuously. Not only the World Cup, but you will have to be a part of every ODI game from a year earlier. You will have to start playing him from now on,” he shared again.
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“He is not a bad option, but it will be a mistake unless we give him at least one year to get ready. If you pick someone for the 50-over World Cup based on him bowling four overs in the two months of the IPL and a month of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, no matter how good that person is, it will be wrong,” Chopra added.
While saying that Mohammad Shami has been among the wickets in First-class cricket, Aakash Chopra added that Bhuvneshwar Kumar outperformed the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) pacer in IPL 2026 as well.
“It’s the same thing for Shami, although he has played the Ranji Trophy and picked up 37 wickets. He is going to play the Duleep Trophy now as well. So Shami has a slightly better case to make, but the truth is that if we do man-to-man marking in the IPL, Bhuvneshwar Kumar is ahead of him in that respect,” he said.
“My understanding is that the selectors, captain, and coach won’t take both of them. Maximum one of them can come, and who that one will be, we will come to know in the next four to six months. By New Zealand, we will have an answer as to which of them is going to come or if no one is going to come, because if neither of them is taken to New Zealand, then that’s it,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
