Manjrekar: India had a 'clear advantage' in knowing their semi-final venue in advance

Did India have a clear advantage knowing where their T20 World Cup 2024 semi-final was going to be staged? India captain Rohit Sharma didn't think there was any. Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar thought otherwise.

"Clear advantage," Manjrekar said on ESPNcricinfo's Timeout show. "Rohit has to say that. He can't say it was an advantage. India would've picked their side based on it. India's problem has been semis and finals and when you know you're playing in Guyana, if you've been wondering why they've got four spinners in their squad, this could be the reason."

Former England batter Nick Knight concurred with that assessment that "it didn't seem right or fair" that India knew where they were playing. It's a school of thought that seems to have found favour from several quarters, most notably his former colleague and opening partner Michael Vaughan.

"Literally, it's their tournament," Vaughan said in the Club Prairie Fire podcast on Thursday. "They get to play whenever they want. They get to know exactly where their semi-final will be. They play every single game in the morning so people can watch them at night in India on TV.

"I get that. I get that money is a big play in the world of cricket. And I get that in bilateral series, but you would think that when you get to a World Cup, the ICC should be a little bit fairer to everybody. It shouldn't be just India just because they bring a few quid in.

"As I said, bilateral, I completely understand it. But when you get to a World Cup, there cannot be any kind of sympathy or any kind of sway towards one team in the tournament. And this tournament is purely set up for India, simple as that."

Knight went a step further in questioning the ICC's decision to have separate rules for both the semi-finals. The Afghanistan-South Africa semi-final on Wednesday night had a reserve day scheduled, while the India-England semi-final had only the provision of an extension by 250 minutes, and no reserve day. The decision to have the final on a Saturday was among other scheduling concerns raised.

"I can't quite get my head around why we've got to this point," Knight said. "I thought watching the group stages, it could've been condensed. I thought they were elongating moments at times between games. And why can't we play the final on Sunday? Am I oversimplifying this to give teams the extra day to travel? I wonder if we could've pushed it altogether a little bit more to prevent this situation from happening."

Manjrekar called for the ICC to make it a level-playing field, and not solely focus on commercial gains.

"It's a wrong way to go about it," he said. "I'm talking about a very idealistic kind of a situation. In this sport, we've put the cart before the horse a lot. We're so excited to take it to the USA, New York. But what about the conditions? You've got to focus on making the product high-quality and a level-playing field and then look for commercial gains.

"We can't just say 'this is what the market wants, let's cater to that' because this is not really a pure, commercial venture. It's got to be about having a high-quality [product]."