Follow UsIndian head coach Gautam Gambhir was not pleased at all by the overused phrase of India getting an undue advantage of playing all their ICC Champions Trophy 2025 matches in Dubai.
Reacting to it during the post-match press conference on March 4 (Tuesday), after India’s win the semi-final against Australia, he got angry and said that people cribbing about India’s wins must grow up.
Echoing captain Rohit Sharma’s words at the pre-match press conference that Dubai is a neutral venue, Gambhir tore into the undue advantage remark.
“There's a lot of debate about undue advantage and all that. What undue advantage? We haven't practiced here even for a day. We're practicing at the ICC Academy. And the conditions there and here are 180 degrees different,” Gambhir said.
“If you look at the wickets there and here, the difference is between the ground and the sky. Some people are just perpetual cribbers, man. They've got to grow up. So, I feel that there was nothing like we had any undue advantage, or we had planned something like that,” he added.
Gambhir also cleared the air on the rumour that India deliberately wanted spinner-friendly tracks in Dubai.
"The plan was that if you picked two front-line spinners in the 15-man squad, then even if we played in Pakistan or anywhere, we would have picked two front-line spinners because it was a competition on the subcontinent. It was nothing like we wanted to set up a spinners' trap.”
“If you look at it, we only played one front-line spinner in the first three matches. We only played two front-line spinners in this match or the previous match,” explained the 43-year-old.
India will play the final at the same venue and will face either South Africa or New Zealand on March 9 (Sunday).