Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Rain forecast may cause delayed start of first Test


Intermittent rains on Tuesday and the prediction of more showers in the coming two days could disrupt the first cricket Test between India and England, beginning on Thursday.
Meteorological Centre Regional Director S R Ramanan told PTI that one or two spells of rains was suppose to lash city in the next 48 hours."For the next 48 hours, there would be one or two spells of rain and cloudy weather conditions would prevail due to activity of the North East Monsoon over Tamil Nadu," he said.
"There is no alert of low pressure or depression in the Bay of Bengal. This is only a normal monsoon activity.
Gradual reduction of rain fall was expected from Thursday, the day that the first Test was to commence," he added.City has been experiencing intermittent rain forcing the Indian team to abandon their practice session, which was delayed from morning to the afternoon, while the England team already in the stadium also faced the same fate.
England team arrived here last night to commence their short tour of India with the first Test but was denied of any practice at the Chepauk grounds so far due to constant drizzle.
Reaching the stadium around 2.00 pm the English were forced to stay indoors at the stadium dressing room, while the Indian could have their sessions for over an hour and were forced to abandon it, also due to rain.In fact, the Indian team which was scheduled to have their practice session from 10.00 am rescheduled their plan to 12.30 pm this afternoon.
The two-Test series was originally scheduled to be played in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, but was shifted to Chennai and Mohali for security reasons after the Mumbai terror attacks.

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