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Tag: Cricket conditions

Champions Trophy: How Shreyas Iyer, Rohit Sharma are the faces of India’s risk management
Sports

Champions Trophy: How Shreyas Iyer, Rohit Sharma are the faces of India’s risk management

As pitches in Dubai seem to be getting slower with each outing, all eyes are on the Indian spinners. However, for India to go the distance a lot is riding on the batting unit, which so far has adapted exceptionally to the sort of tracks that have been their biggest undoing in recent times. With a century each to Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli, they have two in-form batsmen in the top three to go with Rohit Sharma to provide rapid starts. In the middle overs where they need to be flexible with their approach against spinners, they have a solid middle-order which includes an enforcer in Shreyas Iyer and two busy players in Axar Patel and KL Rahul before the finishing job is handed over to Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja. This is as good a top 8 as a team could get in these conditions where b...
Champions Trophy controversy: Why ‘advantage India’ criticism from Pat Cummins and Michael Atherton about Dubai pitches is valid
Sports

Champions Trophy controversy: Why ‘advantage India’ criticism from Pat Cummins and Michael Atherton about Dubai pitches is valid

These are still early days of the Champions Trophy, but the prefix ‘neutral venue’ before Dubai for India’s matches is already inviting chuckles. In a tournament hosted by Pakistan, it is India — thanks to the conditions in Dubai — which is feeling more at home, with teams in Group B already sweating at the prospect of playing their semi-finals here on March 4. It’s somewhat akin to suddenly land up in Chennai to play on carefully-curated sluggish tracks that abet Chennai Super Kings. What’s more, here India don’t have any ‘away’ game. With the match between Australia and South Africa washed out at Rawalpindi on Tuesday, the Group B is now wide open with Wednesday’s fixture between England and Afghanistan at Lahore being a knockout clash. Once that happens, the calculators would be out of ...