Shamik Chakrabarty in Dubai
And louder grows the chorus… Rohit Sharma spoke about Dubai not being India’s home. Steve Smith came up with the well-versed remark. The game’s royalty would grace the Dubai International Stadium for the Champions Trophy semi-final on Tuesday. The mind games have to be en vogue in the build-up.
“Host nation, Pakistan. Home advantage, India.” That was the post on social media, and Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, the two former England captains, jumped on it and started the “fire”, to borrow it from Billy Joel. More on their comment later, but the debate continued to rage over.
As Rohit came for the pre-match press conference, he was asked about India’s supposed home advantage. “This is not our home, this is Dubai,” the skipper retorted. “So, we don’t play so many matches here. This is new for us too.”
A similar question was asked to Smith, when he addressed the media on Monday. The stand-in Aussie skipper responded in the affirmative. “In terms of an advantage, yeah, maybe, I’m not sure,” he said. “Yeah, India obviously played all their games here. So, they have seen what the surface is doing. Obviously the whole square block is pretty dry. Having spoken to the groundsman just now, a dry surface had a lot of traffic. So we have seen how the wickets have played. And India have obviously played really well in their games as well. So, it’s going to be a good contest. We are looking forward to it.”
Smith also spoke about playing some guessing game and eventually getting it right. “Yeah, yeah, we guessed right in the end,” he said about coming to Dubai early. “So yeah, ideal to be here and have a couple of days to prepare. I think had we stayed (in Pakistan) and waited for last night’s result, we would have had to have flown here today and played tomorrow, (and) not get a chance to train on the surface or get used to the conditions.”
Now, to what Atherton had said in conversation with Hussain on Sky Sports Podcast. “They (India) are playing at just one venue. They don’t have to travel either between venues or, you know, between countries, as a lot of other teams have to do,” the former opined, calling it an “undeniable advantage”. Hussain concurred.
Rohit tried to put things in perspective. “No, look, the three matches we played, the nature of the surface was the same. But in all three games, the pitch has behaved differently. Today, we saw that when the bowlers were bowling, their ball was swinging a little. We didn’t see that in the first two games when our bowlers were bowling. The pitches look the same, but when you play on it, it’s played in a different way,” the skipper observed.
Meanwhile, Smith’s boys have been enjoying their time in Dubai “outside of a pretty strict sort of bubble.”
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