The reason why the 3rd T20I between India and Australia was called off

The final T20I was abandoned without a ball being bowled and the series between India and Australia ended up in a tie, India will continue to remain in the 5th spot in the ICC rankings while the Australians maintain their 6th position. The reason for no play today was not because of bad weather or rain on the match day but because of the wet outfield resulted due to excessive rain in the past week.

Despite no rain on the match day, the officials decided against having the match and left the 30000 odd fans disappointed. The two captains Virat Kohli and David Warner, umpires and match officials decided that no play could be possible because of a soft outfield.

The reason

The reason for the abandonment was due to the poor nature of the outfield as visible in the multiple visuals of the half-buried ball on the television. Hyderabad has seen a lot of rain over the past few days due to which the outfield was constantly wet. In fact, the weather had been so overcast and cloudy over the past week that the chances of the sun coming out and naturally drying the wet ground were bleak.

Due to this, in an unorthodox attempt to dry the outfield, three pedestal fans propped up by plastic chairs were aimed at a particularly wet patch on Thursday. The ground staff worked tirelessly in the hours preceding the match but despite the pitch being in perfect condition, the outfield was not fit for play.

Yesterday, a tweet with the picture of the mentioned method being used was posted by Martin Smith, a journalist with the Cricket Australia website, hinting the condition of the ground well in advance. In fact, the weather had been one of the main talking points throughout the series as there was a rain threat in all the ODIs and T20Is. However, all the matches were held without disruption with the Duckworth-Lewis method being used only once.