‘This is not our home’: Rohit Sharma rubbishes talks of India having added advantage of playing all Champions Trophy matches in Dubai | Cricket News
With a lot of controversy erupting over India playing all its Champions Trophy matches in Dubai with many former player stating that the Men in Blue have an advantage of acclimatizing with the conditions, skipper Rohit Sharma on Monday rubbished the claims. Rohit said that the pitch had thrown up different challenges for his team too, saying that Dubai wasn’t their home ground.
“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 during the pre-match press meet ahead of the semifinal against Australia.
He gave an example of the match against New Zealand on Sunday where the team needed to adjust to the pitch.
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“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. So, it is not like we know what is going to happen on this pitch and what is not going to happen,” he said.
“There are four or five surfaces that are being used here. See, 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.
India will face Australia in the 1st semifinal in Dubai on Tuesday while South Africa take on New Zealand in Lahore on Wednesday in the second semifinal.
