CHENNAI: Shortly after playing what was a sensational knock that ended up being not enough in the semifinal of the ICC Champions Trophy, South Africa's David Miller did not hold back on his frustrations with the scheduling of the tournament.
South Africa, along with Australia, had taken an earlier flight on Sunday to arrive in Dubai, waiting to see which semifinal they would be playing. With India setting up a clash against Australia, in less than 12 hours, South Africa were back on a plane to Pakistan with a semifinal to play against New Zealand on Wednesday. Miller, who smashed an unbeaten 67-ball 100 against New Zealand in Lahore on Wednesday, expressed his frustration on the scheduling before adding that he would be rooting for the Black Caps in the final against India in Dubai on Sunday.
"I'll be honest with you. I think I'll be supporting New Zealand," Miller said after the match. "It's only an hour-and-40-minute flight, but the fact that we had to do that. It's early morning, it's after a game, and we had to fly. Then we got to Dubai at 4pm. And at 7.30 in the morning we had to come back. It doesn't make it nice. It's not like we flew five hours and we had enough time to recover and recuperate. But it was not an ideal situation still," Miller said.
Miller isn't the only player to have spoken about the way the tournament is structured. Matt Henry of New Zealand, Miller's teammate Rassie van der Dussen, and even recently retired Steve Smith had alluded to the advantage India have by playing all their games at one venue and the familiarity they have with the conditions.
Miller's comments came a day after India head coach Gautam Gambhir lashed out at the comments as "perennial cribbers" in Dubai on Tuesday. "There’s a lot of debate about the 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. 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," Gambhir said after the semifinal win against Australia.
Meanwhile, amidst similar comments from captain Rohit Sharma and coach Gambhir, India pacer Mohammed Shami had acknowledged that playing in one venue helps. “It helps to be playing in one venue. You know about the conditions and how the pitch behaves. There are a lot of factors. Especially with the cold weather we have, you want to know even more. So you could see it’s a plus point that we are playing in the same venue," the veteran pacer said on Tuesday night.
