Mohali, March 14
Persistent rains that began 4am on Thursday morning, and showed no signs of abating, forced the first day’s play of the third Test to be called off without a single ball being bowled at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium here.

Australia and India will have to wait one more day for the Test to begin. The match timings have been advanced to 9 am, and if need be, the play will be extended till 5 pm.

With covers still under puddles of rainwater and the super-sopper working around them in the outfield, rain drops took little breaks before resuming steadily. From a distance, it made for a pleasing sight as orange-clad groundsmen toiled on the huge ground, much like Liliputians on a Brobdingnagian project. The miniature-sized buckets and household wipers in their hands brought to the fore the futility of the whole exercise.

Having spent 12 years of their lives here, they knew from the outset that this was not going to happen, at least today. So they worked on in their leisurely pace with no signs of urgency. By the time the clock struck 1 pm, the match officials too realised that the day would be fruitless and called off the clean-up, but not before having a customary look at the ground.

The Indian team had arrived as early as 8 am and hung around for only 45 minutes. A glum morning with dark clouds hanging made the Australians stick to the team hotel. They arrived around 11 am and two hours later they were seen rushing to board the team bus as raindrops stuck to their green Cricket Australia T-shirts like misplaced beads. It seems the Kangaroos do not do anything except texting on their mobile phones when they are not playing cricket.

When the Met department predicted thundershowers for Thursday afternoon no one had taken them seriously but a day later everyone marvelled at their new-found accuracy but with a pinch of salt. As if on a cue, thunder and lightening arrived on time.

“We are expecting the weather to be somewhat cloudy but hopeful of a rainless day,” Chandigarh’s Meteorological Department director Surinder Paul said.

Apart from Shikhar Dhawan replacing Virender Sehwag, India are likely to retain the team that won in Hyderabad.

Australia will be playing wicketkeeper-batsman Brad Haddin instead of the injured Matthew Wade. Mitchell Starc and Peter Siddle are the two main pacers. All-rounder Steven Smith will be batting at No. 5, while Xavier Doherty and Nathan Lyon are the two specialist spinners. After bright sunshine had broken through and the giant blue covers were removed at 3.30 in the afternoon, the mat cloth covering the pitch was dripping wet. With rains, the pitch has certainly absorbed some moisture and that may help the pacers a bit on a track that is supposedly spinner-friendly.

Australia would have a bittersweet feeling about today’s washout. A day’s loss means that a highly probable defeat has receded a bit. It also means that the hopes of a very highly improbable victory too have faded, taking with them any chance of a 2-2 result in the series.

Mohali, March 14
For a passionate cricketer a dressing room is a temple, a sanctum sanctorium where he meditates, it’s place where he belongs when he’s not there out in the middle. It’s one place where he would love to be when his girlfriend is not around.

When the field is soggy and sky overcast and there is no hope of a game. The pitter-patter of raindrops trickling through the glass walls while his mates horse around, that’s life to him. Ask any old school cricketer and he will tell you with a glint in his eyes that a rainy day is what every cricketer yearns for in a busy schedule. Those rainy days are few and far between but whenever they come they are more than welcome. You will find Bhajji mimicking administrators, fellow cricketers and other officials. You’ll see Sachin Tendulkar cracking jokes, you’ll see Yuvraj horsing around.

VVS Laxman says rainy days are not an unwelcome break from the schedule. He goes back to India’s tour of West Indies when the ebullient Bhajji whipped up a frenzy on one particular day in Barbados in 2011. Laxman says he cannot forget that day as he literally fell on floor laughing as the Sardar went bonkers and din’t look anywhere near ending. It was hilarious, Laxman remembers as he goes back in time.

Sanjay Manjerkar, a rock at No. 3 for India for a time, says that when it comes to whiling away time on a wet day, Sherry paaji (Navjot Singh Sidhu) was the undisputed Indian Idol. He was crazy, he had uncountable one-liners, stories, anecdotes and what not, Manjrekar told a website.

Those days were fun. On a rainy day the players would stand near the door and predict when the match would begin. Almost everybody made a guess and those guesses stretched as far as the third day of the Test match, he remembers.

It’s not that only Indians enjoy dressing room fun on a rainy day. Australians are no different. Rookie Steve Smith, for instance, learnt to play a new game, Bananagrams, with Ed Cowan while rains played hide and seek.

They might as well have fun when they can, for the team knows songster Nathan Lyon is not anywhere close to singing ‘Under the Southern Cross’, their victory song.

Mohali, March 14
It’s quite possible to imagine the Australian cricketers lining up in a hall outside the cabin of a sports psychologist, all jostling to go in first, all in need of urgent attention. It’s possible to imagine even Mickey Arthur, the coach, scrambling to get to the head of the queue. His leadership and actions and comments during the last few weeks could require an independent evaluation, even lend themselves to criticism.

Their problems on the tour of India encompass a wide range of issues that fall right in the domain of a sports shrink — from self-doubt of individual players to the problem of handling talented but difficult men by the team leaders.

Steve Smith too is one man who could do with some help from a shrink, for Mohali may not hold particularly thrilling memories for him. His final act in Australia’s last Test match here spelt disaster for his team. Yes, he was the unfortunate lad whose throw — as a substitute fielder — resulted in four leg-byes when India needed six runs to win with one wicket in hand. That was October 2010, when India made the 216 required for victory after being 124/8, when VVS Laxman remained unbeaten on 73.

Smith remembers it well, and discussed it in an abashed manner. “I know it was a little different the last time I was here,” Smith said today. “I came on as a 12th man and had three-four overthrows at the end of the game, ended up losing.”

Smith has actually had a session with Cricket Australia sports psychologist Michael Lloyd, who was sent to India after the crushing loss in the second Test in Hyderabad.

“I had a chat with him, yes,” said Smith today. “He is very good at his job. Just about the mental side of things, trying to prepare and making sure you have got a clear mind.”

“I play my best when my mind is clearer. I don’t have too much thought running through, premeditating or doing different things,” he added.

Smith has been doing different things actually, having started as a leg-spinner with hopes of becoming the next Shane Warne. With three wickets in five Tests, it’s clear that he’s only a poor man’s Shane Warne — make it a deeply impoverished man’s Shane Warne, actually. The dreams of becoming Warne II are gone. Now he’s primarily a batsman who can bowl. His return to the team was born of unfortunate circumstances — the penalty on four players in the aftermath of the Homework-gate.

He’s got a very different role for this Test match too; he has hitherto batted from sixth to ninth positions in his 10 Test innings, but will bat at No. 5 in the third Test here. This is a big promotion, a bit of an overachievement for someone who averages less than 29 in Tests.

“Probably I have always been more of a batsman than I was a bowler,” he said, though that was never the perception of analysts and selectors in the past. “The first two Tests I played, I played as a specialist bowler. It’s a bit different now to come in as a No. 5, specialist batter. That’s something that I have worked on in the last couple of years really hard.”

But did it come as a surprise to be in the XI after being almost guaranteed to not figure in the Test series? “Yeah, I have been training hard this tour,” he said. “Good chance to get in the nets and work on your skills during these times. I have done that and I am really feeling well at the moment.”

“I think I have improved a lot in the last 12-18 months. Changed a couple of things in technique that have made me a bit more stable at the crease, more balanced and I guess more selective as well,” he added. “I feel I am playing spin really well on this trip in the nets... I’m looking forward to going out there, and hopefully I will be successful.”

That’s a hope Australia are desperately clinging to.

Coming back to psychologist Lloyd, his arrival in India is highly significant only if it is a direct consequence of Australia’s defeat in the first two Tests — which it’s not, according to Cricket Australia. It’s not abnormal for teams to travel with, or be joined by, sports psychologists during tour.

But after the events of the last three weeks, his coming becomes a deeply significant comment on Australia’s mental disintegration here.

"As a leader I always thought if the boys weren't getting along or we weren't performing then the best thing to do was to lock everyone into a room with some music (and) alcohol. (Then) everyone have their say to each other...” he said. Warne has a rather idealistically optimistic approach to the much-awaited Ashes series. “If they get their selection right, get the players on the field and stay injury-free and they lose a couple of their strike players suddenly it gets a little bit interesting," wrote Warne. Agencies

Boycott said Arthur could have spoken in private rather than behaving like a “teacher”.”It’s like being schoolchildren and giving them something to do and if they don’t do it, then just slapping them. If you feel that there is an area where they should improve, surely it is up to the staff and Arthur, to talk to them,” he said. “I always thought that’s what a coach’s job was. I don’t like the coach-manager - you’re like a teacher,” Boycott said. Agencies

Chandigarh, March 14
No discussion on Indian ladies golf is complete without a mention of Smriti ‘Simi’ Mehra, who leads the fifth leg of the Hero Pro Golf Tour.

Simi started playing at 14 and the last two years before she decided to play pro golf “were huge,”. “I won everywhere... I won the Malaysian National Championship by 25 stokes and that was the only reason my mother even allowed me to turn pro,” adds this confident golfer whose toughest critic has always been her mother. “I had to prove myself at every step of the way. I remember asking her for a bicycle and she said she would get me one when I could ride. I argued that it was difficult to learn if I did not have one to learn on but she left me to figure it out.” However, she has always had the support of her parents. “My brother has picked up a bit of my mother’s criticism,” she says of her brother Sanjeev who has also been a leading amateur golfer.

She’s been there and done it all — roughed it out as a rookie and eventually earned her playing rights on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour, the European Ladies Golf Association and now on the young WGAI. When she played the LPGA Tour she was just 25 and had already won five times on the Futures Tour. She has driven from venue to venue in unknown countries, played every tournament she could qualify for and even roughed it out by sleeping in her car. “I drove around in countries where I could not even read the signs, just armed with a map, but it was fun,” she recalls.

It is quite easy for people who do not know her well to judge her as brash, but a deeper understanding reveals her as a person who has faith and believes in old values and traditions. Just this afternoon she was busy picking up cans strewn in the practice area. “We need to teach kids that the course is like their home, they should not litter their surroundings,” she says with her voice raised, hoping everyone can hear her.

Her students love her — she mentors about 10 youngsters in Kolkata. Her lesson time is completely booked up before she even reaches there. “I try to help them steer away from fear and make the right choices, like which university to go to. They call me when they have a problem, that is really my forte!” says Simi.

Ipoh, March 14
India’s hopes of qualifying for the final of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup hockey tournament went up in smoke after they crashed to their third defeat in the event, losing 0-2 to defending champions New Zealand in their must-win penultimate round-robin match on Thursday.

Five-time champions India needed a victory to stay in the competition, instead it was the Black Sticks who scored two second half goals to keep their flag flying in the tournament.

New Zealand struck through Andy Hayward from their second penalty corner in the 40th minute before Cory Bennett took the match out of India’s reach, scoring the team’s second goal in the 55th minute. Despite the 3-3 draw against Korea earlier in the day, six-time champions Australia are still atop the leaderboard with eight points from four games, followed by hosts Malaysia (7 points) and New Zealand (6), who has leapfrogged to the third spot by virtue of the win over India. Korea have four points from as many games just ahead of India (3 points). Pakistan, who play Malaysia later today, are still in the fray but to remain in the hunt they will have to win their remaining two games.

On the contrary if Malaysia beat Pakistan today, the hosts will be the first team to book its place in Sunday’s final. In that case, New Zealand will have to beat Australia in their final round-robin game on Saturday to make the title clash. Having won only one match (against Pakistan) out of the four they have played so far, India are out of the reckoning and will take on Malaysia in their last league fixture on Saturday. India had earlier lost to Australia and Korea in their opening two games. — PTI

Greater Noida, March 14
Abhijit Chadha shone bright for India with a flawless opening card in his debut European Tour event but it was Thai youngster Chinnarat Phadungsil who stole the thunder from several stalwarts by turning in a sensational 11-under 61 on Day one of the Avantha Masters golf tournament on Thursday.

Abhijit, who ended the day on tied second, was the morning leader with his flawless performance before Phadungsil turned the spotlight on himself.

Abhijit, the PGTI’s Emerging Player of the Year, revelled in home conditions and picked up birdies on the 15th, 16th, 4th, 5th, 6th and the 9th hole to return a card of 66. But it was Phadungsil who sparkled with 11 birdies, eight of which came in a stunning back-nine. — PTI

BRIEFLY

England grab first-day advantage in second Test
Wellington: England took advantage of an easy pitch to post 267/2 on the first day of the second Test against New Zealand. Jonathan Trott was batting on 121. Nick Compton also scored a century, his second in two Tests.
Scores: 267/2 (Compton 100, Trott 121*)

West Indies close in on big win over Zimbabwe
Bridgetown: West Indies were nine for one, chasing a target of 12 to win the first Test against Zimbabwe. The visitors were bowled out for 107 with Shane Shillingford snapping up 6/49.
Scores: Zimbabwe 211 & 107; West Indies 307 & 9/1

Kashyap suffers shock loss at Swiss Open
London: London Olympics quarterfinalist Parupalli Kashyap suffered a shock loss to Wei Feng Chong in the the third round of the $125,000 Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament here on Thursday. Kashyap lost to the Malaysian ninth seed 21-18, 7-21, 16-21 in 55 minutes.

Star Indian cyclists humiliated at Asian Cycling event
Greater Noida: In a shocking incident, Indian women cyclists, including track event podium finisher Manorama Devi, were made to carry medal trays for felicitations to other winning riders at the Asian Cycling Championship. The trays usually carried by ceremonial staff were carried by the trio of Manorama, Sunita Devi and Anjana.

Women’s PGTI rounds hit by rain
Chandigarh: Rain and thunder hit the fifth leg of the Hero Women's PGTI. Play was possible twice before rain, and the ladies will return to the course tomorrow to complete the last three holes. Smriti Mehra was 6-over-par for the day after 15 holes today while Neha Tripathi and Vani Kapoor were 3-over for their rounds.