All-time India World Cup XI

Unpopular opinion first: Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan have outdone Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly as ODI openers. Now the difficult decision: touch and go among those two and Gautam Gambhir. I went for a left-hand batsman, and Dhawan's slightly better record at the World Cup than Gambhir, who played a great innings in that 2011 final and could very easily bat in the middle overs too.

Rahul Dravid is quite underrated as an ODI batsman, and you need that one solid middle-order batsman that gives MS Dhoni the licence. Really wish Jasprit Bumrah had played a World Cup or Bhuvneshwar Kumar had played more than just one match. Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan select themselves. Final spots came down to R Ashwin v Manoj Prabhakar, and Javagal Srinath v Ashish Nehra. For the balance of the side, more than anything else, I went with the spin of Ashwin. And for his superior death bowling, Nehra pipped Srinath for me.