Read Part 1 here
Everything was in India’s favour when they toured in 1985-‘86. Kapil Dev’s seasoned outfit was to play a team that did not look too different from the one of 1977-‘78. Australia had failed to fill the void created by the simultaneous retirements of Greg Chappell, Lillee and Marsh in 1983-‘84, and the decision of some senior players to undertake a rebel tour of South Africa in 1985.
After the first Test at Adelaide ended in a high-scoring draw, India changed gears in the second at Melbourne. Australia were 231 for nine, and only 48 runs ahead, on the last day of the game. The Indians had all but uncorked the champagne, when Australian captain Allan Border and last-man Dave Gilbert decided to personify obduracy. They were separated after adding 77. India, needing 126 to win, were 59 for two at tea when the rain came and did not go away.
India dominated the third Test at Sydney, amassing 600 for four, and then bowling Australia out for 396 in the first innings. The hosts were 115 for six on the fifth evening, but the visitors could not deliver the knockout punch. Not for the first or last time, India ended a series contemplating 'what might have been.'
India’s best batsman of the series was Sunil Gavaskar, who returned to the opening slot after a brief stint in the middle order, and scored two hundreds, during the course of which he completed 9,000 runs in Tests.
Australia’s diffidence of the 1980s had given way to determination when they hosted India for the sixth time in 1991-‘92. The scorebooks state that India lost the series 0-4, but the margin could have easily been 2-3. Kapil Dev had a splendid series, with 25 wickets. The Indians excelled in the third Test at Sydney after being steamrolled in the first two. Ravi Shastri’s 206, and eighteen-year-old Sachin Tendulkar’s unbeaten 148, took them to a position of dominance. Shastri then took four wickets in a bid to secure a win for India, but Border played spoilsport. Australia, 170 runs behind in the first innings, were 173 for eight when a halt was called.
India lost the next Test at Adelaide by 38 runs, after refusing to be daunted by a target of 372. Mohammed Azharuddin essayed a captain’s hand of 106, and Manoj Prabhakar scored 64, but the others could not make much of an impact. India were then blown away in the final Test at Perth, with David Boon scoring his third hundred of the series and Mike Whitney taking 11 for 95. But it was by no means a forgettable affair for the visitors. Kapil Dev took his 400th Test wicket, and the teenage Sachin Tendulkar scored 114 on the world’s fastest surface, leaving spectators awestruck.
It was his, and Indian cricket’s, misfortune that the subsequent tour to Australia came only at the end of the decade. Tendulkar was the only Indian batsman on the 1999-‘00 tour who had prior experience of Test cricket in Australia, and that hit the visitors hard. They were thrashed by a team that was in the process of establishing a world record for the maximum number of consecutive Test wins. The fifth, sixth and seventh wins of their sixteen-match streak were achieved against India at the turn of the millennium. The margins of Australia’s wins say it all – 285 runs at Adelaide, 180 runs at Melbourne, and an innings and 141 runs at Sydney.
India had nothing to cheer about, besides Tendulkar’s 116 at Melbourne, and VVS Laxman’s 167 at Sydney.
The cynics predicted four successive fourth-day finishes when Sourav Ganguly’s side took the field at the start of Steve Waugh’s swansong series in 2003-‘04. The Indian captain silenced them with his match-saving 144 in the first Test at Brisbane. The cynics were dumbfounded when Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman did an encore of their 2001 Kolkata heroics in the second Test at Adelaide. Their stand of 303 rescued India from 85 for four to 523, and then the Indian bowlers took over. Dravid, who had scored 233 in the first innings, scored an unbeaten 72 in the second innings, as India achieved the target of 230 with three wickets in hand.
Australia delivered a riposte in the next Test at Melbourne, Virender Sehwag’s 195 on the first day notwithstanding. Ricky Ponting set up a nine-wicket win with his second double hundred of the series.
The final Test at Sydney witnessed a double hundred by Tendulkar, and several other tall scores. Steve Waugh’s 80 in his last Test innings brought about a 1-1 stalemate, but the Indians retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy by virtue of having won the previous series in 2000-‘01.
Australia regained the trophy in India in 2004-‘05, and retained it at home in 2007-‘08, but not before the Indians went down fighting in the second Test at Sydney, and then became the first team from the subcontinent to storm the Australian bastion of Perth.
From rank underdogs in 1947-‘48 to fierce rivals six decades later, the Indian cricket team has come a long way.
Read Part 1 here
Devendra Prabhudesai is Manager, Media Relations and Corporate Affairs, BCCI. This article first appeared in the BCCI Souvenir on Australia’s tour of India in 2008-‘09.
