When multiple squads for a big tour are announced via the same media statement, important bits of information can get lost. There was so much to parse in the BCCI's announcement of India's ODI and Test squads for their New Zealand tour, for instance, that Cricinfo missed noting that Ishan Kishan would be India's vice-captain for the fourth and fifth ODIs.
This was understandable for two reasons. One, vice-captaincy changes hands very quickly in Indian cricket. And two, Kishan would only be vice-captain for those two matches because India's Test players, including their Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill, would not play them.
But it was noteworthy in any case, hinting at how India's selectors and team management seemed to be thinking about their squad composition for the 2027 World Cup in southern Africa.
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World Cup squads are tricky little things, and the little isn't superfluous. There's no hard-and-fast restriction of squad sizes in bilateral series. World Cup squads, however, can only include 15 players. This often leaves selectors needing to make heartbreakingly difficult decisions.
Rohit Sharma was at the wrong end of one such decision in 2011. The hurt he felt then is one of the many things fueling his determination to play next year's tournament at the age of 40.
His dream hung in the balance less than four months ago, but he has revived it in the most emphatic manner since, scoring two centuries and a 92 in the space of four ODIs. And this has had knock-on effects on other dreams, most notably those of Yashasvi Jaiswal.
When Rohit's spot at the top of the ODI batting order seemed to be in danger, Jaiswal had seemed poised to take it over. Instead, Jaiswal hasn't played an ODI, or even featured in an ODI squad, since scoring an unbeaten 110 against Afghanistan in Chennai in June.
Jaiswal is the only India batter to score two hundreds in his first six ODI innings. If bilateral cricket was all India were playing, Jaiswal would be the reserve opener in every ODI squad they pick. With a World Cup to build towards, however, they can't keep carrying a specialist reserve opener - particularly one who doesn't bowl or keep wicket, and has batted outside the top two only three times in 41 List A games.
This is where Kishan comes into the picture, as the kind of Swiss-Army-Knife player invaluable to any squad. Is he India's third-best ODI opener? Is he India's second-best ODI keeper-batter? Is he India's next-best specialist middle-order batter behind Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul? Numerous candidates can contest Kishan's claim to be the definitive answer to each of those questions, but no one else comes close to being the answer to all three of them. If Kishan is the 12th name in India's World Cup squad, India's selectors will have a little more flexibility in who they can pick as Nos. 13, 14 and 15.
This versatility certainly helped Kishan's case ahead of the 2023 World Cup. It's a testament to Indian cricket's bottomless well of top-order talent that he wasn't in India's first-choice XI despite having scored what was then the fastest double-hundred in ODI cricket in the lead-up to the tournament. Like Jaiswal now, he couldn't displace either Rohit or Gill from the top of the order then. But unlike Jaiswal now - though this could change in the future - Kishan had a secondary skill as well as the ability to bat anywhere in the top six.
Kishan wasn't at Eden Park's outer oval on Sunday and Monday, when the ODI-only members of India's touring party trained there. Between those two practice sessions, he was in Hamilton, carving, flat-batting and helicoptering his way to a 32-ball 61 in the T20I series finale. The innings should have significantly narrowed the 31-point gap between his No. 3 position in the ICC T20I batter rankings, as on October 27, and the No. 1 position occupied by Abhishek Sharma.
Ever since his comeback to international cricket earlier this year, Kishan has been at the very cutting edge of T20I batting. He's done it at the top of the order, and he's done it at No. 3, against pace and spin and in all phases of the innings. It's pretty clear he can do it in ODIs too - his third-most-recent innings in the format was a 79-ball 125 against Afghanistan.
That innings, coming at No. 4, was Kishan's first ODI hundred as a middle-order batter. He averages 61.87 as opener - from the limited sample size of nine innings including his double-ton - and 34.00, while striking at 97.45, elsewhere in the order.
It's clear that Kishan has the game for ODIs, but he's only batted four times in the format since his international comeback, and hasn't had a whole lot of match practice to hone his 50-overs rhythm.
How much time will he get during this New Zealand tour? It's almost certain he will play the fourth and fifth ODIs, when Gill and Rahul depart to join their Test colleagues. But will that be all he plays? It might be in India's longer-term interests to give Kishan a game or two before that as well, to bat him in different situations and help him gain a feel for those roles. It might be in their interests to do this in every series they play until the World Cup. They have a Swiss Army Knife in their toolbag; it might help them to keep all its edges sharp and ready to go should the need arise.