Cricket: Australian Woes Washed Away For A Day In Mohali Test!

Incessant rains washed out the entire first day’s play of the third Test match between India and Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Mohali today. For the depleted Australian team thanks to the unprecedented decision of the team management to punish four players for indiscipline the rains seemed to have wiped off their woes—for a day at least. But at the same time trailing 0-2 they needed to win this contest desperately to stay alive in the Series and losing one full day makes it all the difficult for them to press for a favorable result within four days or even three depending on the pitch and field conditions. For victorious India too the loss of a day means they have to try harder to seal the Series with an all-time record of winning against Australia by 3-0 or even 4-0.

Brad Haddin was flown in on Monday to replace the injured keeper Wade and that made a team of 12 giving them an option to make one change. And they took the option by dropping all-rounder Glen Maxwell despite a good Test debut to utilize their all available specialist bowlers—the pace trio of Siddle, Starc and Henriques with two specialist spinners, Lyon and Doherty. Sort of optimizing the best available resources to hope for a favorable result.   Tough going indeed for a team that occupied the top spot in world cricket for so many years. For India, it will be a new opening pair in years and all the youngsters in Team India must be praying for play to begin tomorrow.

For the moment it is wait and watch.

Turbulent Times! 

Meanwhile too many things happening on the political, economic and other fronts in India. The Indian Parliament presented the Railway Budget and the General Budget for 2013-14 where the opposition political parties failed to find enough populist measures for making more than enough noise. But then, all the skeletons rolled out of the cupboard to make the goings-on as difficult as usual. Things got harder with Italy ignoring India on the marines issue, terror coming back to Jammu and Kashmir after three years in the wake of the hanging of Afzal Guru, Pakistan today passing a resolution in Parliament to condemn the hanging and demanding the body back, the male-dominated India struggling to draft an anti-rape bill that will ensure safety of the females and at the local level the Maharashtra Assembly budget session had also begun on Monday with the worst drought in 40 years ravaging the state. It has been an engulfing potpourri of crisis and commotion, and this poor writer being in the media has been caught in the accompanying hard work hardly finding any time to do justice in these pages!