DUBAI: The ICC’s Global Cricket Academy here is laced with desert sand. As you enter the premises, the heat emitted from the turf hits you hard in the face. At the practice area, you find cricketers going through their paces to keep in shape for the tournament.
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Besides sorting out strategies and combinations, the Indian team knows overcoming the conditions is going to test their claim to be the best team across formats. Amongst all the participating teams, barring Hong Kong, India is the only team that has the least idea about the conditions and the nature of pitches here.
“For the guys coming in from England, it will be a challenge. The conditions are not easy,” Rohit Sharma conceded. MS Dhoni happens to be the only player from the Indian team to have played international cricket in the UAE – way back in 2006. BCCI has avoided playing cricket in the desert for reasons beyond cricket.
The current Indian batting has been bred on flat decks in white-ball cricket. At best, they have only had to contend with scoreboard pressure over the last few years. The slow pitches and the searing heat will push India’s batsmen.
Pakistan left-arm pacer Usman Khan revealed the revival of a phenomenon that would excite the purists. He talked about reverse swing. “Today’s wicket was slowish but I was trying to bowl fast. With the new ball, I was going for wickets, but I didn’t get any. When I came on for my second spell, the ball was scuffed up, so I got reverse swing,” Usman said after dismantling Hong Kong on Sunday.
The match against Hong Kong on Tuesday is more like a warm-up for India. “The last time we played here was at the IPL in 2014. So tomorrow is a perfect chance to understand conditions, wickets, dimensions of the ground and all those kind of things,” Rohit reckoned. He went on to add: “We know the pitches will get slower. We may have to adapt to that and based on conditions, we may have to play our XI.”
Preserving players, with a choc-a-bloc calendar on their heads, has been a tough task for the support staff. Two instances of injuries getting aggravated -Bhuvneshwar Kumar and R Ashwin – hampered India’s chances in England. It’s up to the team management to bring their heads together and work out a way to maintain the stability of the team and uphold the unrelenting, chest-thumping standards of fitness of the team. The format is such that one bad game could lead to major embarrassment.
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