(Photo credit: X)
DUBAI: The pitch for the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy final at the Dubai International Stadium here on Sunday night between India and New Zealand will not exactly be a fresh one, unlike the pitches for the previous four India matches here in the tournament, but a ‘semi-fresh’ one.
TOI has learnt that the final will be the same strip which was used for the India versus Pakistan group stage match between the arch-rivals, which was played two weeks ago-on Feb 23. India had won that match by six wickets. Batting first after winning the toss, Pakistan had folded up for 241 in 49.4 overs, with Chinaman Kuldeep Yadav being the top wicket-taker with three for 40 in nine overs, while allrounder Hardik Pandya took two for 31 in eight overs. Crucially, India employed 26 overs of spin in that match (Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja were the other spinners), which went for 129 runs and fetched them five wickets.
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India, in reply, chased down the target in just 42.3 overs, with batting maestro Virat Kohli scoring his 51st century- a magnificent 100 not out off 111 balls. Shreyas Iyer (56) and Shubman Gill (46) also played crucial roles in India’s comfortable win. Pakistan’s best bowler-and this must be noted in the context of this being the pitch for the final too-was leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed, who conceded just 1-28 in 10 overs. Having taken five for 42 in 10 overs against New Zealand on a different pitch here, what a Varun Chakravarthy can do under lights is anybody’s guess!
So far, four different pitches have been used for the three matches played here – India versus Bangladesh, India versus Pakistan, and India versus New Zealand. The wicket prepared for Sunday’s summit clash of the global event will not be one that’s previously not been used, though it will be 14 days since an ODI match was last played on it, which gives it sufficient time to recover and be termed as “semi-fresh,” a source. TOI understands that there are 10 pitches at the DICS, out of which four have been used for India’s matches in the Champions Trophy.
The wickets here are obviously being prepared by the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB), which controls DICS. The curator of the surface here is Australia’s Matthew Sandery, who looks after the pitches at the ICC Academy too. The pitches for the Champions Trophy at DICS have mostly been slow and dry with some assistance for the spinners, and it seems that the wicket for the final will follow the trend.
It has been suggested that India benefited because they had a chance to get used to one wicket, which has mostly helped their spinners, unlike any other teams in the competition, who have had to play on different surfaces as different venues. Annoyed at such insinuations, India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir took aim at such critics as “perpetual cribbers”.
“See, first of all, this is as neutral a venue for us as it is for any other team. We have not played here. I don’t remember when last we played here. And in fact, we didn’t plan anything like that. The plan was that if you pick two frontline spinners in the 15-man squad, then even if we played in Pakistan or anywhere, we would have picked two frontline spinners because this was a competition in the subcontinent. So it’s not like we wanted to spin a spinners’ web. If you look at it, we only played one frontline spinner in the first two matches. We played two frontline spinners in this match and the previous match,” Gambhir said.
He then added, “And there’s a lot of debate about the undue advantage and all that. What undue advantage? We haven’t practised here even for one day. We’re practising at the ICC academy. And the conditions there and here are 180 degrees different. Some people are just perpetual cribbers, man. They’ve got to grow up. I feel that there was nothing like we had any undue advantage.”
After losing the semifinal here by four wickets to India, Australian captain Steve Smith credited Rohit Sharma & Co for their winning run in Dubai, rather than focusing on familiarity with the surface. “Yeah, look, I’m not buying into it. I think it is what it is. India obviously played some really good cricket here. The surface kind of suits their style with the spinners that they’ve got and the seamers that they have at their disposal for a wicket like that. They played well, they outplayed us, and they deserve the victory,” Smith said.
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