Not Rahul, Dhawan or Gill; Brett Lee suggests "sure-shot" opener for India to open with Rohit Sharma in ODI WC 2023

The next big cricket event will be played in India, when top teams across the globe will compete to be the ODI World Champions. England will defend their title in the upcoming marquee tournament, which will take place in October and November next year.

The last time India hosted (co-hosted) the ODI World Cup, MS Dhoni led this team to their second ODI World title in 2011. However, with the mega event coming back to India, the hosts will surely be one of the favourites to win the tournament.

However, there are a few questions that the Indian management needs to solve. One of the first concerns is finalising the two batters who will open for India in the ODI World Cup. Notably, India has used a number of openers in ODI cricket in the last few months or so.
Rohit Sharma will be the team's first-choice opener because he is the captain, but who will open with him? Veteran Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan has led and opened the team in ODIs since he is not part of the Test and T20I teams, so he will open with Rohit.

Or it will be vice captain KL Rahul. Although, Rahul has done a decent job in middle-overs in ODIs, so he might do the same job only. Then, there are two young openers in Shubman Gill and Ishan Kishan who have been scoring runs consistently in 2022.

Former Australia pacer Brett Lee has chosen a favourite batter to open the upcoming mega-event alongside skipper Rohit Sharma. In a video uploaded on his YouTube channel, Lee said that Ishan is the prime contender after scoring the fastest ODI double century recently.

He said, "With this deadly double, Ishan has staked a strong claim to open for India in the ODI World Cup at home in 2023. Will this happen? I don’t know. Should it happen? Hell yeah, it should. He should be a sure-shot opener for India at the World Cup."

Furthermore, Lee said that India need to back the young opener as he will be high on confidence after scoring a double century. However, he also gave some advice to Ishan and said that he needs to forget his double hundred and focus on future matches and stay consistent with his performance to stay in contention.