“Australia is the best place to play cricket in, once you get used to the conditions. The only problem is that you take two months to get used to the conditions.”
Sunil Gavaskar’s pronouncement at a Cricket Awards function in 2002 elicited claps, and more than one wistful smile. The audience comprised the crème de la crème of Indian cricket, some of who had either ascended to greatness, or been sorted out, by the world’s No. 1 team, at some stage of their careers.
Like their counterparts from other countries, Indian cricketers have discovered over the years that the only path leading to the attainment of immortality, or the trapdoor to oblivion, passes through Australia.
India’s nine cricketing tours Down Under encapsulate the country’s evolution as a cricketing powerhouse.
Fittingly, India’s first cricketing assignment as an independent nation in the winter of 1947-‘48 was against another erstwhile British colony-turned-Parliamentary democracy. The squad that flew to Australia under the captaincy of Lala Amarnath lacked the likes of Vijay Merchant, Syed Mushtaq Ali and Rusi Modi, three of India’s best batsmen at that point. Australia were led by the Don himself. He had under him the band of Invincibles that would conquer England in the summer of 1948.
Australia won four of the five Tests, with the second Test being drawn due to rain. Bradman scored four hundreds, and completed his 100th first-class hundred in a game between an Australia XI and the visitors. Not for the first or last time, the Indian cricketers and cricket-lovers sought solace in individual glory. Capt. Vijay Hazare’s twin hundreds at Adelaide made him a hero, and Vinoo Mankad gave a splendid account of himself as an all-rounder.
The story and scoreline were unchanged when India toured Australia next twenty years later, under the leadership of Mansoor Ali Khan ‘Tiger’ Pataudi. There were four Tests this time around, and India lost all of them. As had been the case in 1947-‘48, Indians treated individual excellence like a consolation prize. Pataudi’s 75 and 85 at Melbourne, and Erapalli Prasanna’s 25 wickets, earned them encomiums even from the unremitting Australians. Another silver lining for India was M.L. Jaisimha, who joined the team just before the third Test at Brisbane, and scored 74 and 101. India finished just 39 runs short in that game.
It was another ten years before an Indian cricket team visited Australia. The 1977-‘78 series coincided with one of the biggest controversies the game has seen. The unavailability of the frontline Australian cricketers of the time due to their involvement in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket forced the Australian Board to lean forward, as well as backward. A group of youngsters was picked, and the 42 year-old Bob Simpson, who had retired after the 1967-‘68 series against India, recalled as captain and batsman.
The series kicked off at Brisbane, where India improved upon their 1967-‘68 performance, but failed to win. Australia won by sixteen runs, and prevailed in the second Test at Perth by two wickets. B.S. Chandrasekhar commenced India’s resurgence with figures of 12 for 104 in the third Test at Melbourne. India won by 222 runs, and then pocketed the next Test at Sydney by an innings and two runs. The decider at Perth was a six-day affair, like most series-deciders those days. India, set 495 to win in the last innings, made a good fist of it, but were all out for 445. Australia thus took the series 3-2.
The Indians may have got off the mark in Australia, but they were not very happy with the defeat against, what was for all practical purposes, Australia’s second XI. That Simpson’s youngsters beat a side of seasoned campaigners was a tribute to the tenacity that has characterised Australian cricket and cricketers for more than a century.
India’s best batsmen in the 1977-‘78 series were Gundappa Viswanath (four fifties) and vice-captain Sunil Gavaskar (three hundreds). They headed the side that visited Australia for a three-Test series in 1980-‘81. Bowling-wise, the side wore a new look, with the emphasis having shifted from spin to fast-medium. Gavaskar, the captain and premier batsman, was expected to carry on in the same vein that had yielded him 23 hundreds from 63 Tests.
The Indians gave a good account of themselves in the first-class games preceding the Tests, and were thus reasonably confident before taking on the combined might of Greg Chappell, Rodney Marsh, Dennis Lillee and others, in the Tests. Packer had disbanded his brand of cricket more than a year previously, and the biggies were back.
The hosts outplayed the visitors in the first Test at Sydney. Skipper Greg Chappell scored 204, and the pace trio of Lillee, Rodney Hogg and Len Pascoe made a mockery of the Indian batting. India lost inside three days, but unlike their predecessors, the players were not demoralised. The twin triumphs of 1971, the proficiency of the spinners, the rise and rise of Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath, and the advent of Kapil Dev, not to mention several stirring performances on foreign soil, most notably the successful pursuit of a target of 403 against the West Indies at Port of Spain in 1976, had changed the mindset of the Indian cricketer.
India’s resurgence in the second Test at Adelaide was led by Sandeep Patil, who had scored 65 in the previous Test before being hit on the ear by Pascoe and hospitalised. Patil wore a helmet at Adelaide, and delivered a flawless performance. His 174 and Chetan Chauhan’s 97 enabled India to reach 410 in response to Australia’s 528 for eight. Despite that, India were in some strife on the final day, before tail-enders Shivlal Yadav and Karsan Ghavri held their nerve to ensure a draw.
For the first three days of the final Test at Melbourne, the Indians were down and out. They batted first and scored 237, largely due to Viswanath’s 114. Australia replied with 419. Openers Gavaskar and Chauhan wiped out 165 of the 182-run lead. Once they had made the breakthrough, the Aussies kept striking at regular intervals.
The hosts needed only 143 to win, but were undone by a sensational bowling performance. Kapil Dev, who had pulled a thigh muscle earlier in the game, returned to the fray after taking painkillers, and bowled his heart out to take five for 28. Dilip Doshi gave nothing away at the other end, after Ghavri had made the initial strikes. The hosts were dismissed for 83, and the Indians ecstatic at squaring the series.
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.
