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The last hope for Steve Smith and David Warner to play Sheffield Shield and the Tests this summer may come from a bizarre source: the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
With India touring Australia for a Test series in 2018-19, the BCCI will insist on the strongest Australian team to challenge Virat Kohli’s number one ranked side.
In India, the stadia are almost empty during Test matches. It is the television rights that make the long-form financially viable – and with Smith and Warner on the sideline, income from TV rights will zoom down.
In a month or so, the headline could be: No Smith, no Warner and no Indian cricket team to visit Australia.
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Ever since India’s first tour of Australia, 71 years ago, controversies have regularly erupted.
Their pioneering 1947-48 tour started three months after India’s independence. Because of unsettled political situations and the formation of Pakistan, Muslim Indian cricketers Mushtaq Ali, Abdul Hafeez Kardar and Fazal Mahmood did not tour.
The Sydney Test of December 1947 is remembered for the dismissal of Bill Brown just before stumps on Day 2 – better known as the ‘Mankad’ incident.
Backing up at the bowler’s end, Brown was a yard from his crease when run out by Vinoo Mankad before delivery. Mankad had previously warned and subsequently run out Brown in similar circumstances in the match against the Australian XI on the same venue a month earlier. Mankad had also warned him in the subsequent match against Queensland.
The sportsmanship of Mankad’s actions were debated, with Don Bradman conceding that Brown should have learnt from his experience. Regardless, a new cricket phrase was coined: being Mankaded.
Two days after the January 1948 Adelaide Test, tragedy hit India – the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated in Delhi on January 30.
It was one of the saddest days in history – a man of peace violently shot down on his way to pray for unity between Hindus and Muslims. The team seriously considered abandoning the tour but decided to go ahead.
Both teams and the umpires wore black bands and assembled on the ground before play started in the fifth and final Test in Melbourne on February 6.
Turn the clock ahead to 1977 and, due to the formation of World Series Cricket, all regular Australian Test cricketers except Jeff Thomson opted to play for ‘Packer’s Circus’.
In that exciting but topsy-turvy series, veteran Bob Simpson, aged 41, made a successful comeback as skipper.
Australia won the series 3-2, Simpson scoring 539 runs in five Tests at an average of 53.90, hitting two centuries (176 and 100) and two 50s (89 and 51). And that too against India’s mesmerising spin trio of Bishan Bedi, EAS Prasanna and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar.
The Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds ‘Monkeygate’ saga in 2007-08 saw the Indian team threaten to go home after Harbhajan was found guilty of racial abuse, before eventually being acquitted.
A Test was postponed on India’s last tour of Australia, when tragedy struck. During a Sheffield Shield match in Sydney in November 2014, 25-year-old Phillip Hughes was rushed to hospital after a sickening blow from a short ball. He never regained consciousness and died from his injuries.
I predict more pleasant episodes during India’s upcoming tour – reducing the ban on Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft to six months so they can provide scintillating and engrossing cricket against the tourists.