Rain splits India, Australia points, Pak in semis

Rain led to India's Champions Trophy game against Australia being abandoned and points shared. The result sent Pakistan into the semis; for India to go through now, they must beat the Windies, Australia must lose to Pakistan and India must be ahead of Australia in the net run rate.THE Indian players watching the water-logged Centurion field from the dressing room would have had a sinking feeling.
With thundershowers and lightning cutting their match against Australia short, they are no longer masters of their own fate. Australia had scored 234 for four in 42.3 overs when the rain came down, and with the downpour showing no signs of easing up, no further play was possible.

Having lost their opening match to Pakistan, India now need a lot of things to go in their favour on Wednesday if they are to make the semi-final. For starters, they need Pakistan to beat Australia in the first match, and then beat the West Indies by a big margin later in the evening. With an abysmal net run rate of -1.08 at present, Mahendra Singh Dhoni & Co are not in very good shape. And considering their show so far in the tournament, the challenges might prove too big.
Good start AFTER a sloppy bowling performance against Pakistan in their opening match, there was a glimmer of hope that India might take a Uturn on that front as Ashish Nehra dismissed Aussie opener Shane Watson for a duck. But as was the case against Pakistan, two old hands got involved in a stand that took the initiative away from India.

Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey didn't quite do what Mohd Yousuf and Shoaib Malik did, but their92-runstand provedequallyeffective. Both were out soon after completing their half-centuries, but by then Australia had built a platform on which a match-winning score looked practically inevitable.
Harbhajan flat THE Aussie domination with the bat was because of another dismal display by the Indian bowlers, with their spearhead proving blunt for the second successive game. In Zaheer Khan's absence, Harbhajan Singh came in to the Champions Trophy as the only trump card in Indian skipper MS Dhoni's hands. He was the pointman around which most of India's bowling plans were to be made. His five-wicket haul during the tri-series final in Sri Lanka had bailed the team out, but it hadn't managed to hide the inadequacies of the pace attack.

Pacers Ishant Sharma and RP Singh look like shadows of their former selves, and with the dependable part-timer Yuvraj Singh out due to injury, Dhoni had all his eggs in the basket that Harbhajan was holding. India went in with five bowlers, Amit Mishra replacing Yusuf Pathan and Praveen Kumar coming in for RP Singh. And while both the replacements turned out decent spells, the two games in South Africa proved that an offday for Harbhajan means nothing works for India either.

The off-spinner followed his figures of 10-0-71-1 in the loss to Pakistan with a 9-0-54-0 show against Australia, and India seemed all set to face another marathon chase when the match was called off.

-From IndianExpress