If it’s ‘advantage India’ in Dubai, so be it: Rohit Sharma and his team are not losing any sleep over it

“At the end of the day, it’s a neutral venue, it’s a challenge for both the teams, we don’t come and play in Dubai much either.”

Shreyas Iyer was on point the other night, after playing a significant hand in India’s six-wicket win over Pakistan. The question put to him, by a Pakistani journalist, was how much more satisfying it would have been to beat Pakistan in Lahore or Karachi, say, instead of in Dubai, where India are playing all their Champions Trophy matches. “Any victory against Pakistan is sweet because it’s always competitive and it’s a challenge and there’s a lot of external pressure.”

In the last ten days or so, there has been a sea of opinion alluding to the ‘advantage’ India have been conferred with in the Champions Trophy. India are the only team to play all their matches at the same ground, the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. They are the only side who knew from even before the tournament started that if they reached the semifinal, they would play in Dubai on March 4, and that if they qualified for the final, they would turn up at the same venue on March 9. For the rest, including tournament hosts and defending champions Pakistan, who have been since eliminated, the where would depend on how and how far India progressed.

Is it too fair on India and oh-so-unfair on the rest of the field? You’d have to say yes. There is a certain benefit from not having to travel between countries or even cities, from staying in the same hotel, from falling into a routine that can be so comforting. Of not having to live off a suitcase, so to say, unlike the other seven teams. That counts for a lot, let’s make no mistake.

But has the tournament been designed to facilitate India’s march through the draw? Are India flexing their muscle and using their financial clout to make things easier for themselves? Kidding, right?

One wonders if this narrative of ‘advantage India’, espoused largely but only but former England cricketers, among them Nasser Hussain, Mike Atherton and Jonathan Agnew, as well as injured Australian captain Pat Cummins and South African batter Rassie van der Dussan, would have taken shape had India not won both their Group A games. The conditions at DICS are most predictable and each of the other sides has played there numerous times in the past. Indeed, for a long time, it was one of Pakistan’s ‘home’ venues following the attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009.

Do India really have an advantage in Dubai?

Familiarity with conditions is one thing, to be able to adapt one’s games, mindsets and attitudes to these conditions is quite another. India came into the Champions Trophy on the back of three home One-Day Internationals against England, played on excellent batting surfaces where the ball rushed on to the bat and off it with equal ferocity. That philosophy – going hard at the bowling, a luxury that the presence of eight batters in the XI overs accords – has been India’s limited-overs mantra for two and a half years now. But confronted with an entirely different kind of challenge in Dubai, where stroke-making has been anything but straightforward, India have shown the smarts and the skills to recalibrate and revisit their strategy. Their attitudinal shift has been impressively commendable.

In this clamour to paint the team as the villain of the piece – the players really had no say in how the schedule unravelled, even Messrs Hussain and Atherton will agree – India’s versatility and their ability to perform even outside their comfort zone has barely been highlighted. In both their victories against Bangladesh and Pakistan, India were chasing competitive targets in tricky batting conditions – under lights, the ball came on even slower, hitting through and against the line was fraught with danger. Just because they knew what to expect didn’t mean much if they couldn’t alter their gameplans and swap ego for commonsense and prudence. England, of all teams, should know the value of being flexible; after all, their complete faith in ‘Bazball’ to the exclusion of everything else is taking them nowhere, not in Test cricket and certainly not in the two white-ball formats.

If knowledge of and familiarity with conditions is the sole criterion for success, one wouldn’t have had to wait till 2011 to unearth the first home champion in an ODI World Cup. Hybrid models are a compromise, and no compromise is ever ideal. If that sparks a debate on perceived advantage, justified or otherwise, so be it. Rohit Sharma and his men aren’t losing any sleep.