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I read an article in "The Hindu" which was titled as:

Advantage Australia as India battles self-doubt

I think there should be "advantaged" instead of "advantage".

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Headlines tend to be short, instead of being fully grammatical sentences. This particular headline is not even literally true.

In this example, "Advantage" is not an adjective describing "Australia". Instead, the headline is designed to resemble a description of a tennis score during a game or set.

A tennis match consists of sets, which consists of games. A game needs to be won by two points, and a set needs to be won by either two games, or by winning a tie-breaker game that has special rules. In tennis, the first point has a score of 15, the second point increases the total to 30, and the third point increases the total to 40. After a game reaches a 40-40 tie, it does not matter whether the server has won 3 points or 5 points or 7 points. Instead, what matters is whether the server is ahead, behind, or tied with the server's opponent. This is indicated by saying "Deuce" if the score is tied, or "Advantage" and then the name of the player who is ahead.

So in this example, "Advantage Australia" means that Australia is more likely to win than India. (It literally means that Australia is ahead, but the article later explains that the two countries are tied in a series of cricket games.)

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    The headline could be rewritten as 'Advantage to Australia...' or 'Australia has the advantage..' if that makes it clearer about the intent of the original.
    – MKHC
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 9:48
  • Can we take 'advantage' as a verb in the headline?
    – dan
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 11:34
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    @dan Taking "advantage" as verb would make "Australia" the object, and therefore "advantage Australia" would be an imperative, ordering somebody to give Australia an advantage. In this context, that doesn't make any sense.
    – alephzero
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 11:56
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Put as much of that money as you can in tax advantage programs where it can grow either tax-deferred or tax-free, that's your IRAs, your Roths, your 401(k)s.

NationsBank also eliminated fees for 10 banking services for its advantage customers.

You see in these example sentences "advantage" is a Noun which is used as Attributive Modifier. In the Nominal structures, the function of "advantage" is pre-head modifier.

In your example sentence too it's used in the same way. It is not just in the headline, but it can occur anywhere.

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    I agree with what you say at the beginning when referring to programs and customers but I disagree that it applies to the example sentence. I don't know what it could mean if it qualified 'Australia'. What is "advantage Australia"? Is it a particular type of Australia? I prefer the explanation given by pyro that it means, "'Advantage to Australia...' or 'Australia has the advantage..'"
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 15:21
  • @chaslyfromUK First of all Australia and India here refers to the cricket team of their respective country. It definitely doesn't mean a particular type of Australian team. Rather it means Australian team who have advantage over the other team. Just like "advantage customer" in my second sentence. It means customer who have advantage over the other customers.
    – Man_From_India
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 17:21

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