Former Indian batter Robin Uthappa has denied that India has an unfair advantage in the ongoing Champions Trophy. Many cricket experts, including Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain, have claimed that India has an advantage as they are playing all of their matches in Dubai.
On the other hand, all the other seven teams of the tournament are playing their matches across three different venues in Pakistan and they also need to travel to Dubai if they are to play India.
Meanwhile, it was pre-decided that India wouldn’t travel to Pakistan due to security and political reasons and they would play all their matches in Dubai in a hybrid model tournament.
Uthappa said on PTI, “But why didn’t we go to Pakistan? These are geopolitical reasons. And every country has a right. If they don’t want to go, then they shouldn’t go. And if a team has to play in a venue because of that, then they have to play. We could have complained that if we had played in Pakistan, our record scores would have been very good.”
“Every batsman gets an opportunity to make a run. This is a matter of speaking. At the end of the day, a match is between a bat and a ball. And I believe that the team that plays well on that day will win.”
Uthappa said India doesn’t have a home advantage but agreed that the Men in Blue have a familiarity edge as they are playing all their matches at the same venue and they also don’t need to travel.
“I won’t call it a home advantage, but there is definitely a familiarity advantage. I was listening to an interview yesterday. If I am not mistaken, Wasim Jaffer was saying that if he was going to play in Dubai, he could have played one match in Dubai, one match in Abu Dhabi and one match in Sharjah. They could have definitely done that. So that other teams don’t have to complain about this situation,” said Uthappa.
India will bat first against New Zealand at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai on 2nd March.
