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OPINION: India had huge advantage at Champions Trophy - let it be

football13 March 2025 11:03| © MWP
By:Neil Manthorp
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Sporting success and team glory is rarely remembered for the bumps, bruises and controversies along the way, no matter how relevant they were to the course of a match or competition or how much they contributed to deciding the winners and losers.

In time, usually a short period, the only thing that matters – and is recalled – is the name of the winning team and perhaps the scoreline.

So, despite the continuing grumbles about the ‘unfair’ advantages afforded to India during the course of their largely unhindered march to the Champions Trophy in Dubai on Sunday, that is what they will be remembered as. Champions.

Dozens of former players and even some, brave current players have pointed out that playing all five of their games at one venue, without any debilitating physical and emotional downsides of international travel, not to mention the familiarity with playing conditions, gave the Indian team a huge head start on the seven other teams.

Any number of examples could be used, but former England captain, Michael Atherton, summed it up as well as anyone writing in The Times:

“India gained an undeniable advantage. The contrast in conditions was stark: Dubai’s slower pitches and lack of dew kept scores manageable, while in Pakistan, teams were racking up 300+ totals in dewy evening chases. Australia even pulled off a record-breaking 352-run chase in Lahore.

"But India? No nasty surprises, no late-night dew factor, and no travel fatigue,” Atherton wrote.

Many other critics were more emotional and less sanguine than Atherton.

THE BEST TEAM

But those who suggested that India’s refusal to travel to host-nation Pakistan and insistence on playing in the UAE was the reason they won the tournament are very wide of the mark.

India were the best team at the tournament by a distance and deserved to win.

But talking of distance… their opponents in the final, New Zealand, played at four different venues and racked up over 7 000 kilometres in the air during the two-week competition.

That may not sound much for the cricketers from the country which always has to travel further than any other to compete, but it’s not the flying time which is so exhausting – it’s the hours getting to and from airports which, in their case, were (un)comfortably three times more than they spent in the clouds.

South Africa’s players travelled around half that distance but it did include a 20-hour return trip to Dubai in case they were required to play India in the semifinal.

When they weren’t they returned immediately to Lahore, an excursion which both David Miller and Heinrich Klaasen described tactfully as “not ideal.”

MOST POWERFUL AND PERSUASIVE

But talk of the ICC “taking a stand” and “saying no” to the BCCI is as much a waste of energy as it is time.

The International Cricket Council is a collection of junior managers who do as they are bade by the owners of the company they work for.

And the owners, contrary to the populist perception, are all of the test-playing nations, not just India.

It’s just that India is the most powerful and persuasive of them – by a long distance.

South Africa’s players and administrators did well not to criticise.

They had nothing to gain and much to lose by doing so.

Apart from the heart-warming success of the test side, the SA20 is the only ‘guaranteed’ jewel in the South African game.

One only needs to be reminded of the words of its Commissioner, Graeme Smith, after the third season just a month ago:

“Everyone who has experience in cricket knows that the Indian market is the key to the game with its huge fan base and the commercial aspect that it brings.

Obviously our six franchise teams originated in the IPL and have invested heavily in the SA20 and one of our biggest broadcast partners is over there, so if you want to grow and challenge globally then you need the viewership and you want people to tune in.

“They are ultimately the success points if you want to maintain your vision for the future and how you grow. Jio and Viacom have been an integral part of backing the league from the beginning when it was still just a dream and were just selling an opportunity.

Smith said his team’s ‘hope’ was for between “200 and 250 million viewers in India” but that indications from the broadcasters were that that figure was closer to 600 million.

“That really separates us from all of the other leagues outside of India,” Smith said.

If that means cricket in South Africa keeping its collective mouth shut and accepting the status quo, that’s probably an acceptable price to pay for the income it earns.

And if it makes it even harder to win ICC tournaments, so be it.