The 5th Test between Australia and India in 1948 in Melbourne was also Don Bradman’s last game at home. (Reuters/MCG)
Australia had completed their second innings victory against India at Adelaide, with Vijay Hazare scoring a century each in the losing cause, during independent India’s first summer tour of Australia in the Indian winter of 1947-48.
The half-a-year-old country was only just finding its feet in international cricket, up against the mammoth run machine of Don Bradman and stern examinations by Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller, when it was struck a brutal emotional blow. Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated back home.
Writing about the India-Australia cricket rivalry, in his book Indian Summers, edited extracts of which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Gideon Haigh, penned, “In light of his achievements (at Adelaide), Hazare was excused India’s next fixture, in Mildura against Victorian Country. But it was in that unlikely setting that the Indians learned the stunning news of the loss of their own national guru. On the way to a late-afternoon prayer meeting in Delhi, Mahatma Gandhi had been shot by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse. The cricket team’s manager, Pankaj Gupta, described it as a “national catastrophe”,” Haigh wrote.
During the 5th Test between Australia and India in 1947/48 both teams observed a minutes silence for Mahatma Gandhi on the opening day. It was also Bradman’s last Test match in Australia #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/L3gt8P0DBR
— Melbourne Cricket Ground (@MCG) December 19, 2018
The manager would report his players as grief-stricken, the extract recalls, and Gupta having said: “We have been stunned. None of us could get any sleep last night. We just sat around sadly listening to the All-India radio. Some of us wept at the news.”
The extract recalled the team being so shaken, “that there was thought of calling off the tour.” But the Indians continued onto the second Test of the tour at Melbourne after the New Years fixture. On February 6th, 1948, the MCG somberly rose in unison to pay tribute to the greatest Indian to walk this earth, a week after his death. No non-Britisher had been honoured thus in Australia unyil then.
Haigh writes, “In the event, the Fifth Test in Melbourne was preluded by a minute’s silence for the Mahatma – perhaps the first time that the death of a non-British leader had been so honoured in Australia. “The Indian players seemed to lose heart in the final game,” thought Bradman – perhaps it is no wonder.”
The February 6-10 match of 1948 was lost by India by an innings and 177 runs. Vinoo Mankad struck a 111 in India’s first essay, responding to Australia’s 575/8 declared, even as Hazare (74) and Dattu Phadkar (56) struck half tons as India made 331. But no Indian crossed 17, with only 4 in double digits, in the second innings as the grieving team looked to head home.
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