Patrick’s test at Indy washed out
Danica Patrick returned to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this week expecting to drive an Indy car for the first time since 2011.
Weather prevented her from turning any laps, but she still debuted her new No. 13 Ed Carpenter Racing machine on Indy’s famed Yard of Bricks.
Patrick didn’t mind her disrupted schedule.
“This is better for a couple reasons — I’m nervous to get back in the car,” Patrick told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
“I am nervous and it gets worse as it gets closer, so I think for that reason, it’s good to wait a little longer. But it’s also better to wait a little longer and be in a more realistic situation with the cars and the conditions being right before the month of May starts.”
Patrick used her time in Indy to instead reveal the final race car of her career, which she will now first get to drive at a rescheduled May 1-2 test at Indy. She traveled to Indianapolis earlier this month for a seat fitting with the Carpenter team and said it felt like old times.
Isner an easy winner
KEY BISCAYNE, FLA. » Nothing was coming easily to John Isner over the first three months of this year, and he was essentially a nonfactor in every tournament he entered. Until now.
The big-serving American is in the semifinals of the Miami Open for the second time in the past four years, after overpowering South Korea’s Hyeon Chung 6-1, 6-4 in just over an hour on Wednesday afternoon. The 14th-seeded Isner finished with 13 aces, won all but one of his 32 first-serve points and avenged a loss to the 19th-seeded Chung at Auckland in his first match of the year back in January.
Isner will next face either No. 5 seed Juan Martin del Potro or No. 20 Milos Raonic.
The women’s semifinals also continued taking shape Wednesday, with No. 6 seed Jelena Ostapenko ousting fourth-seeded Elina Svitolina 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5) to reach the final four at Key Biscayne for the first time.
Smith, Warner banned for 12 months
JOHANNESBURG » Captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner were banned for 12 months after an investigation into the Australian cricket team’s cheating scandal identified Warner as the instigator of the ball tampering plan that unraveled in South Africa.
Cricket Australia said Warner “instructed” young batsman Cameron Bancroft to carry out the tampering on the field with a piece of sandpaper — even showed Bancroft how to do it — then misled match officials and tried to cover up his role in the cheating.
Smith, the top test batsman in the world and the star of Australian cricket, knew about the plan. But the captain failed “to take steps to seek to prevent the development and implementation of that plan,” Cricket Australia said as it released the findings of the investigation.
Smith and Warner were banned from playing for Australia, or any high-level cricket in Australia, for a year.