Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar reserved blockbuster praise for the Rohit Sharma-led side following their Champions Trophy 2025 triumph in Dubai on Sunday. Gavaskar labelled Rohit’s India as the “best white-ball team on the planet”, highlighting their recent dominance in ODI and T20I cricket. The legendary batter also echoed India head coach Gautam Gambhir‘s “cribbers can crib” remark, slamming critics for claiming that India had an ‘undue advantage’ due to them playing all Champions Trophy games at the same venue.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“Without a question, any team that reaches all three finals, the 50-over final where they finished as runners-up, the T20 World Cup victory, and now the Champions Trophy must be considered the best white-ball team on the planet,” Gavaskar told India Today.
“There’s no doubt whatsoever. Cribbers might crib, as Gambhir said, but to be able to reach all these finals, with no home advantage, and still win, speaks for itself,” he added.
Gavaskar’s remarks comes after Gambhir told the ‘perpetual cribbers’ to ‘grow up.’
“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 which tournament we played in this stadium last. And in fact, we didn’t plan anything like that. The plan was that if you pick two front-line spinners in the 15-man squad, then even if we played in Pakistan or anywhere, we would have picked two front-line spinners because it was a competition on the subcontinent. So, it was nothing like we wanted to set up a spinners’ trap. If you look at it, we only played one front-line spinner in the first three matches,” Gambhir said during a post-match press conference.
Former Pakistan spinner Danish Kaneria also rubbished the talks of India having an advantage of playing all its matches in Dubai, including the final, and said such things are beyond understanding.
“For the next two or three days, there will be discussions about how Pakistan was the host and India won the trophy. Many people in Pakistan were talking about how India had the advantage. I don’t understand how such things can be said… (Dubai) It wasn’t India’s home ground. It used to be Pakistan’s home ground.
“I don’t think India has played matches in Dubai before the Champions Trophy. This same question was asked by a Pakistani journalist to Gautam Gambhir, and he gave a very apt and sharp response,” Kaneria told IANS.
from: NDTV Sports-Latest