Dubai, March 3: Indian skipper Rohit Sharma brushed aside suggestions that India enjoyed an unfair advantage in the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy by playing all their matches in Dubai, asserting that the pitches here have presented varying challenges to his team.
Several former players from Pakistan, Australia, and England had voiced concerns over India’s continued presence in Dubai, arguing that it offered the Men in Blue a better chance to acclimatise to the conditions compared to other teams in Group A.
However, Rohit downplayed the notion, clarifying that Dubai is not India’s home venue and that his side had to adapt to the unpredictable nature of the pitches.
“Every time, the pitch is giving you different challenges. The three matches that we played here, the pitch has behaved differently. This is not our home, this is Dubai. We don’t play so many matches here, and this is new for us too,” Rohit said in the pre-match press conference ahead of the semifinal against Australia on Tuesday.Highlighting the importance of quick adaptability, Rohit said India will have to adjust to the surface regardless of the pitch used for the knockout clash.“There are four or five surfaces that are being used here. I don’t know which pitch is going to be played in the semifinals. But whatever happens, we will have to adapt and see what is happening and what is not. And we will play on that,” he added.
Citing India’s last Group A match against New Zealand, the Mumbai batter pointed out how the pitch had something to offer for both pacers and spinners.
“We saw that when the (New Zealand) bowlers were bowling, it was swinging a little bit. We did not see it in the first two games when our bowlers were bowling. In the last game, we did not get to see that much spin, today there was a bit of it. So, there are different things happening on every surface,” Rohit said.
With India carrying five spinners in their squad, Rohit explained that the decision was made after closely monitoring the ILT20 tournament in Dubai earlier this year. “Looking at the surface here, hearing about what has happened in Dubai in the past two months, we kind of knew that surfaces are going to be slow. We were watching ILT20 which was played here and we thought the slower bowlers will be a lot more helpful here,” he revealed.
The Indian skipper acknowledged that arriving in Dubai well in advance helped the team adjust to the conditions, having trained at the ICC Academy.
“It was important for us to adapt quickly to these conditions. Luckily, we came here five or six days before, we had good training sessions and the pitches at the Academy were very much similar to what we are going to get here.
The adaptation is the key when you play on any surface and we adapted pretty well in all three games,” he added.
Rohit also played down the weight of expectations on his team, insisting that the pressure to win will be equally distributed between both sides. (PTI)
