India in Perth: Inside the growing Australia-India rivalry as heavyweight bout looms

Australia v India. Sunil Gavaskar v Dennis Lillee. Virat Kohli v the Australian team. Monkeygate. Mankad. It might not have the same build-up as an Ashes series, but it’s no less a contest. In fact, International Cricket Council rankings confirm it is Test cricket’s current heavyweight battle, with the two nations ranked one (Australia) and two (India) entering the summer opening West Test at Optus Stadium, with the first ball next Friday. The Australia-India rivalry has rarely spilled off the field, avoiding the geo-political turmoil that has underscored so many other of the world’s sporting contests. That is because the two countries have never had any real political beef with each other and have generally had cordial economic ties. There have, however, been seismic fractures over time. The Monkeygate Scandal in Sydney in 2008 provided the most heated on and off the pitch, when India threatened to pull out of its tour of Australia after its off-spinner Harbhajan Singh copped a three-match ban for allegedly hurling racist insults at Australia’s Andrew Symonds. That ban was overturned after a delicately balanced hearing involving players and officials from both teams and while the accounts of what happened differ to this day, it was the start of a healing process. The two countries have competed for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy since 1996-97, with India winning 24 Tests to Australia’s 20 and claiming eight of nine series on the subcontinent. The Aussies’ rare away triumph win was in 2004-’05 when West Australian batsman Damien Martyn was player of the series, while India produced its first series victory on Australian turf in 2018-’19 and followed it up with a memorable triumph in 2020-’21. Prior to the Border-Gavaskar series, India consistently struggled on tour against Australia as they strove to cope with the change from the flat, turning tracks at home to the bouncier Australian pitches. Two rare Test victories came on the 1977 tour when Australia was forced to pick a third-string side led by comeback captain Bob Simpson at the age of 41. The cream of Australia’s first-choice cricketers had signed for Kerry Packer’s rebel World Series Cricket, creating a necessary schism that ultimately moved the game forward. Even then, India lost the series 2-3 and on their following tour in 1981, they had to be content with just the one win and for the next two decades, India failed to win a single Test in Australia. The first ever cricket encounter between the two countries was Australia’s 1935-36 tour of British India when it played four unofficial Tests, followed by an Australian Services team playing on the subcontinent in 1945-46. The Test rivalry became official when the newly independent India, captained by allrounder Lala Amarnath, toured Australia for the first time in 1947-48. The Indians lost 4-0 to a Don Bradman-led Australian team that was about to tour England undefeated and become known as the Invincibles. Before the Test series, the first of 14 first-class matches on that 1947-48 tour was played against Western Australia at the WACA Ground with the match drawn. Bradman reeled off big centures in the first Test with India bowled out for 58 and 98 at the Gabba before the second Test in Sydney was marred by rain. That second Test ended in a draw but was steeped in infamy for the “Mankading” incident when Indian bowler Vinoo Mankad ran out Australian batsman Bill Brown for backing up too far, despite being warned for the action in the first Test. Mankad was swamped with claims of poor sportsmanship, but years later was defended by Bradman in his autobiography. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why [the press] questioned his sportsmanship,” Bradman wrote. “The laws of cricket make it quite clear that the non-striker must keep within his ground until the ball has been delivered. If not, why is the provision there which enables the bowler to run him out? By backing up too far or too early, the non-striker is very obviously gaining an unfair advantage.” Mankading was later considered “unfair play” under Law 41 of the Marylebone Cricket Club, but is now officially a “run out”. Australia won the third Test at the MCG by 233 runs on the back of twin Bradman tons, while Mankad responded with a century of his own. Bradman’s double century in the first century in Adelaide ensured Australia’s victory by an innings and 16 runs, before Neil Harvey (153) and Mankad (111), ticked the scoreboard over at the MCG as Australia won the fifth Test by an innings and 177 runs. Two decades later, India unleashed a spin quartet that would change the face of world cricket. Off-spinners Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan, leg spinner BS Chandrasekhar and left-arm tweaker Bishen Bedi became the staple of Indian cricket in the 1960s and 70s, playing a combined 231 Tests and snaring 853 wickets. They were feared all over the world, but particularly on the dry, dusty turning pitches of the subcontinent. Oddly, they played together only once, regularly interchanging for series wins at home and in the West Indies and England, as well as Test victories in Australia and New Zealand. Some other highlights: India lost the series 4-0 with a Ravi Shastri double hundred in Sydney the highlight of the tour, but 18-year-old Sachin Tendulkar’s 114 on a bouncy Perth pitch was the highest score for an Indian in both innings and gave the world a taste of what was to come from arguably the greatest batsman since Bradman. After India had lost the first two Tests, Sunil Gavaskar and BS Chandrasekhar dominated for India in its 222-run victory. Gavaskar, who got out for a duck in the first innings, scored 118 in the second, while right-arm legspinner Chandrasekhar took 12 wickets for the match, a symmetrical 6-52 in each Australia innings. Sunil Gavaskar was so angry at umpire Rex Whitehead’s lbw decision off the bowling of Dennis Lillee, he asked his opening partner Chetan Chauhan to leave the field. The two were stopped at the boundary by the Indian team manager and Chetan was sent back. India won by 59 runs, inspired by a five-wicket haul from allrounder Kapil Dev in Australia’s second innings, to record only its third win on Australian soil. Many years later, Gavaskar reflected it wasn’t the dismissal that riled him, but the manner of the Austalian send off.

India in Perth: Inside the growing Australia-India rivalry as heavyweight bout looms

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