“Get On With It.” The whole Australian cricketing setup needed this self-reassuring call in the wake of Phillip Hughes’ death from a bouncer. Hughes was possibly the most loved young gun in Australia at that time.
The incident necessitated some changes in the schedule of the Border Gavaskar Trophy in 2014-15, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) duly obliged, despite its image to the contrary.
That was the last time audiences witnessed both teams on the same page. After that series, a bloodbath followed, and surprisingly for the world, Australia ended up on the receiving end most of the time.
During that series, the Aussies fell on the wrong end of history. Most of the cricketers in their team were closing in on 35 years of age. Captain Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Ryan Harris, Shane Watson, Shaun Marsh, Chris Rogers, Peter Siddle, and the fiery Mitchell Johnson—all were inching closer to the end of their careers.
They all had one common experience: witnessing the rise of India under captains Saurav Ganguly and later M. S. Dhoni. While Ganguly was famously known for his stingy attitude, such as making master manipulator Steven Waugh wait for the toss, Dhoni believed in sending subtle messages of dominance.
In one match during the 2007/08 Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia, Dhoni had stopped the match and conveyed to the dressing room that they should not rejoice excessively after the victory. Mind you, this was not as easy as any armchair cricket expert would like to believe.
That team still had Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Brett Lee, and many others in peak form. Only a few months earlier, it had shrugged off any doubts over its ability by winning the 2007 ODI World Cup without losing a match.
Dhoni wanted them to know that they were transforming into an ordinary side and that young Indian players did not care about their reputation. Except for Sachin, everyone in the team was under 30.
Little did those Aussies know that the newfound confidence in the Indian setup would give birth to volcanoes like Virat Kohli. Kohli turned out to be one among a league of geniuses whose bat and mouth both talked.
Before Kohli, the Aussies had seen only mavericks like Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff showing such aggression against them. Both were over six feet tall and mighty powerful. They did not expect that level of aggression from 5-foot-something Kohli, even though they had one in their team in the form of David Warner.
The Australians’ habit of getting under the skin of opponents through sledging did not work against Kohli. Against an unsolicited throw from Johnson, he would make a comeback with a back-to-the-bowler drive going over his head. The mighty Johnson could only smile.
When asked about his brash attitude, Kohli had no shame in being politically incorrect as he refused to respect those who did not respect him.
In many ways, that 2014-15 series was transformative for the Border Gavaskar Trophy’s (BGT) future. Australia had beaten India 4-0 in the last Australian leg of the trophy. In response, India thrashed them in 2013 with the same margin in the Indian leg. Though Australia won the 2014-15 edition, the rise of Kohli and K. L. Rahul’s stroke play in the debut series were the takeaways for experts.
Over the next 10 years, it proved to be the last smiling note for the Aussies. India went on to dominate the BGT in both home and away Test series. Those who grew up in or before the 90s couldn’t imagine Australia not winning a Test series against a team for 10 years.
They will need to be convinced that it is not only the team that is losing but also the Australian spirit that has been put to the test. The team, which would not hesitate to sledge below the belt, was left to fend off teasing by Ishant Sharma in the 2016-17 edition. Steven Smith particularly was at the forefront of the firing line whenever both teams turned up—whether in Test matches or ODIs.
The Australian star was so much on the back foot that his arch-nemesis Kohli had to jump in to protect him from chants by Indian fans reminding him of the infamous Sandpaper Gate. While protecting Smith, Kohli probably wasn’t aware of the symbolism behind Indian fans sledging an Australian star.
This was a moment of establishing authority and setting the record straight against one of the successors of Allan Border. In his book, Border revealed that, to pass the time, Australian cricketers used to treat Indians as monkeys chasing bananas or other food items (not his actual phrase).
Border and his teammates would drop money from the hotel in Kanpur and, if needy Indians scrambled to pick it up, they would pour buckets of water on them. “We took to dropping rupees and watching them scramble. We would fill up all the available receptacles in the hotel room with water, drop the coins, and whoosh!”
This unreal racism came back to haunt them in the 2007/08 series when Andrew Symonds misinterpreted Harbhajan Singh’s Hindi curse word as “monkey,” creating a whole drama. This followed India being denied victory due to absolute fraud umpiring, where umpires took decisions by seeking suggestions from Australian captain Ricky Ponting on national television.
Ponting later went on to play with his rival Harbhajan for Mumbai Indians and these days earns hefty sums from coaching or mentoring IPL teams. Ponting’s passion for the game is still there, but the fifth-largest sports league in the world has refused to tolerate his aggression.
The same holds true for present Australian names like Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Glenn Maxwell, and Tim David, among others. They all play decent cricket and are well-behaved in the tournament.
Even when Starc sledged Indian players in a recent series, it always came with a smile, which is interesting since Cricket Australia and even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have said that the contest between the two sides is greater than the Ashes.
It is true that there is a financial angle to it as the BGT brings revenue due to Indians watching it in huge numbers; however, the underlying cricketing reasons can’t be dismissed.
For any iconic rivalry with Australia, a team needs three key constituents—batsmen who can dominate both home and Australian conditions, a fast-bowling battery, and a specifically designated sledging department.
India has all of it in the form of players like Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal, K. L. Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami and newly minted Harshit Rana, among others. Kohli and Pant have handled the sledging department too well, while Bumrah is making established players like Smith and Labuschagne look like 14-year-old flat-track bullies.
The BGT has everything an Ashes series has, but one aspect it lacks is time. The BGT is barely a 29-year-old trophy with its rivalry component added after 2014. On the other hand, the Ashes began due to a rivalry between two nations.
At this juncture, the BGT rivalry seems incredibly bigger than the Ashes, but such rivalry will need to continue for at least 40 years with the same intensity. Otherwise, Indian cricket fans may feel like pawns when it turns out that projecting it bigger than the Ashes was just a marketing gimmick.
Can it turn out to be a purely cricketing rivalry borne out of players’ passion?