Former Pakistan fast bowler Junaid Khan added to the ongoing controversy around scheduling the 2025 Champions Trophy by subtly blaming the BCCI and the Indian team for benefitting from it. His statement came just before the final between India and New Zealand at the Dubai International Stadium on Sunday.
Taking to social media, Junaid pointed out the contrasting travel distances among three participating teams - India, New Zealand and South Africa. He showed that the Proteas, whose journey ended in the semifinal earlier this week, travelled 3286 kilometres, including the fruitless travel to Dubai and back to Pakistan in less than 12 hours amid uncertainty over their semifinal fixture. New Zealand, who played across all four venues, including Dubai, travelled 7150 kilometres. On the contrary, the Indian team did not have to travel as they played all their matches in Dubai.
"Distance travelled between matches in Champions Trophy 2025: New Zealand: 7,150 KM, South Africa: 3,286 KM, India: 0 KM. Some teams win by skill, some win by scheduling...," he tweeted.
Advantage India?
Geopolitical reasons restricted the Indian team's travel to Pakistan for the ICC tournament. This forced the ICC to name the UAE as the neutral venue for all India's matches. But amid chaos over scheduling, India have been accused of gaining an advantage by playing all their matches at one venue, while the rest of the teams had to travel between more than two cities.
{{/usCountry}}Geopolitical reasons restricted the Indian team's travel to Pakistan for the ICC tournament. This forced the ICC to name the UAE as the neutral venue for all India's matches. But amid chaos over scheduling, India have been accused of gaining an advantage by playing all their matches at one venue, while the rest of the teams had to travel between more than two cities.
{{/usCountry}}However, India head coach Gautam Gambhir dismissed the claim.
"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," he said after India's win against Australia in the semifinal.
"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."