ICC World Cup 2019: A look at India's last three squads

#2 World Cup 2015

Indian Team - 2015

The squad for WC 2015 consisted of two regular openers - Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan, with Ajinkya Rahane as the back-up opener and regular middle-order batsman. The middle order of India containing MS Dhoni, Rahane and Suresh Raina was pretty good.

It was surprising to see that the Indian squad didn't have a back-up wicketkeeper then. The Indian squad had only one batting all-rounder, Stuart Binny and three bowling all-rounders, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel.

The pace attack of India had the likes of Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohit Sharma. The bowling performance of India was good except in the semi final against Australia.

Sqaud: Ravichandran Ashwin, Stuart Binny, Shikhar Dhawan, MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Akshar Patel, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Mohammed Shami, *Mohit Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Umesh Yadav.

The Indian team, lead by veteran MS Dhoni, won all the six matches in the league stage. They defeated Pakistan, South Africa, UAE, West Indies, Ireland and Zimbabwe in the league stage and Bangladesh in the quarter-final. Australia won against India by 95 runs in the semi-final, which was first their defeat in that World Cup.

Shikhar Dhawan, who scored 412 runs in 8 matches with an average of 50.5, was the leading run-scorer for India. Umesh Yadav was the highest wicket-taker for India, picking 18 wickets averaging 17.83, with an excellent strike rate of 21.44.