India’s coach Gautam Gambhir was at his ornery best after taking the microphone to sum up his side’s defeat of a weakened Australia in the Champions Trophy semi-final in Dubai.
Because of India’s refusal to send a team to Pakistan, the host country for the tournament, all their games have taken place in the UAE, at the same stadium, on similar pitches.
KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja of India celebrate after defeating Australia.Credit: Getty Images
By contrast, their opponents have crisscrossed Pakistan and the UAE. Before Tuesday night’s semi-final, Australia and South Africa were compelled to fly to Dubai in case they were drawn to play India. The Proteas then had to fly back to Lahore after qualifying for the other semi against New Zealand, which will now serve as the last game of the event in Pakistan. Sunday’s final will be in Dubai because India are in it.
When Hardik Pandya shoved Tanveer Sangha down the ground for six late in the game, the Indian chair of the International Cricket Council, Jay Shah, collected the ball and threw it back, looking less like the neutral arbiter of world cricket than a proud father of 11 cricketers. But evidently, all that talk of “undue advantage” got Gambhir steaming.
“There’s a lot of debate about the undue advantage and all that. What undue advantage?” he challenged reporters. “We haven’t practiced here even for a day. We’re practicing at the ICC Academy [a few hundred metres away]. And the conditions there and here are 180 degrees different.
“If you look at the wickets there and here, the difference is between the ground and the sky. Some people are just perpetual cribbers, man. They’ve got to grow up. So, I feel that there was nothing like we had any undue advantage.”
In reality, players on both sides of India’s four-wicket victory agreed that conditions, and the knowledge of how to play them, had played their part in the outcome.
“The wickets we played on, yeah, they’re completely different tracks,” Australia’s stand-in captain Steve Smith said. “This one’s quite slow, two-paced, took some spin. I think the Gaddafi track [in Lahore] is arguably one of the best one-day wickets in the world for batting. The ball skids on nicely, the outfield’s lightning and yeah, there’s definite differences there.
“The square block [in Dubai] as a whole I think has seen a lot of cricket over the last couple of months. We can see it’s pretty tired and that’s probably the reason why we haven’t seen a score above 300 in the tournament here so far. So we did a reasonable job, but we probably just lacked a couple of those partnerships just dragging out a little bit further to get us up somewhere near 300 or just above.”
Mohammed Shami, India’s skilful pace spearhead in the absence of Jasprit Bumrah, did not deny it had helped him to play a series of matches on the same ground and the same pitch square.
“Because you are playing at one venue, you have an opportunity to get used to the conditions properly,” he said. “A lot of things … the way the weather was today, cool, your brain works even more. It can be said that it is a plus point that all your matches have been played at the same venue.”
Australia may still have beaten India in the knockout game had they extended one or two batting partnerships and then held all their catches. That in itself is extraordinary, given that Smith’s side was lacking Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood from the squad.
Marcus Stoinis retired rather than play the event, Mitchell Marsh is injured, and Matt Short was ruled out of the semi-final after picking up an injury against Afghanistan. Matt Kuhnemann, so destructive with the ball in Sri Lanka and recently cleared to bowl after an erroneous umpire’s report questioning his bowling action in that series, might have made a useful addition also.
That, too, is another big factor not only in this event, but the whole cricket calendar: Australia will send a far stronger group of players to the imminent Indian Premier League than turned out for the Champions Trophy. Cummins has been bowling this week in Sydney, while Starc has enjoyed the acquisition of a new ride-on mower.
India’s greatest advantage in Dubai, therefore, was not so much pitches as the gaps in the ranks of their opposition.
“We’ve got pretty good records in big games in ICC events and I thought the guys turned up and did a really good job,” Smith said. “It’s obviously a bit of inexperience in our team, particularly our bowling attack. Some new guys there who I thought did a really good job as well.
“So, they’re going to be better for the exposure to a big event and playing against world-class players like the ones we came up against today and throughout the tournament. So, plenty of positives to take from it.”
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