The Australians in India

It took some time for the full relevance of Australia's brief goodwill tour of India, to play a series of one-day internationals, to become apparent. In the end, what started as a public relations exercise to help the Indian authorities celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Ranji Trophy had a considerable impact on Australian cricket. Indeed, the shock waves are still being felt.

From a cricketing standpoint, it was a most successful undertaking. Australia won the five-match series three-nil - the matches at Trivandrum and Jamshedpur were abandoned after rain - which was a considerable achievement after India's success in the World Cup the previous year. However, with the benefit of hindsight, Australia's first success in such a series on the sub-continent can be seen to have been the least significant happening. While he had personal success, Kim Hughes lost support within his team and within a few weeks had resigned the Australian captaincy. The Indian excursion culminated with a gala dinner in Bombay, a priceless moment in the history of Indian cricket, and on their way home several of the Australian players had their first significant contact with representatives of the South African Cricket Union. Clandestine discussions with organisers of rebel teams took place in Singapore, leading in April 1985 to another major crisis for Australia's cricketing authorities.

The visit to India will also be remembered for the farce of Jamshedpur, where a one-day international could not be started as scheduled because the players' gear had been misplaced by officials. This was an incident which caused great embarassment to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, who have been charged with the responsibility of organising, jointly with Pakistan, the 1987 World Cup.

India, who had reinstated Sunil Gavaskar as captain following Kapil Dev's sequence of failures after their 1983 World Cup triumph, did not seem as intensely committed to the one-day series as the Australians and were comprehensively beaten. Kepler Wessels was named Man of the Series. The Australians, who proved very popular, won prizemoney of 25,000 rupees (£2,000), most of which they donated to a home for crippled children in Ahmedabad.

Match reports for

1st ODI: India v Australia at New Delhi, Sep 28, 1984
Report | Scorecard

2nd ODI: India v Australia at Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 1, 1984
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3rd ODI: India v Australia at Jamshedpur, Oct 3, 1984
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4th ODI: India v Australia at Ahmedabad, Oct 5, 1984
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5th ODI: India v Australia at Indore, Oct 6, 1984
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Tour Match: Bombay v Australians at Wankhede, Oct 8, 1984
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