By Karan Agrawal 
India stormed into the final of the Champions Trophy after a fighting win over Australia in the first semi final in dubai and will now take on New Zealand on March 9 at the same venue. The Rohit Sharma-led side has played all its matches in Dubai in the ongoing edition of the tournament, as the Indian team didn’t travel to Pakistan due to the sour relations between the two countries. With India playing all its matches at a single venue, there has been a lot of chatter about India having an unfair advantage with the team being familiar with the pitch and conditions at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.
The Debate
Former players like Naseer Hussain and Michael Atherton have been quite vocal about the same and were the first ones to kick off the debate. Talking about it in one of the episodes of the Sky Sports podcast, Michael Atherton said, “What about the advantage India have in playing in Dubai, only in Dubai? Which seems to me to be a hard-to-quantify advantage, but an undeniable advantage,” to which Nasser Hussain agreed
The Clarification
Although there has been a lot of talk on how the ICC is favouring the Indian team as a major chunk of its revenue comes from this particular country India’s captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Gautam Gambhir have denied the claims of the team having an unfair advantage “This is not our home, this is Dubai. So, we don’t play so many matches here.“This is new for us too,” Rohit said on the eve of the first semi-final against Australia, with Gautam Gambhir backing him by reiterating the same thing after the match. In the words of Gautam Gambhir, “This is as neutral a venue for us as it is for any other team. We have not played here. I don’t remember which tournament we played in this stadium last. And in fact, we didn’t plan anything like that.”
The Opinion
With the captain and coach on the same page, the debate seemed to have stopped after India’s win over Australia until fast bowler Mohammed Shami decided to have his “It is certainly helping us. We know the conditions and the behaviour of the pitch.” “It is certainly an advantage to play all the matches at one venue,” said Shami. Shami’s comments have given a new lease of life to a highly talked-about issue and have allowed former and current players to reiterate what they have been saying since the schedule of the multination tournament was announced.