India and Australia - cricket as a relational metaphor

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: undertake an extensive visit to India. However, Bradman continues to be revered in the sub-continent, a fact of life Downer seemed to be cashing in on.

The Bradman aura was most evident to me in June 2005 while visiting a severely injured friend at his Calcutta home. Subir Mitra, Managing Director of the well-known Bengali publishing company, Ananda Publishers, was bandaged all over, with pain and agony, written large on his face. Yet he did not want me to leave without seeing something extraordinarily important. This was a piece of paper bearing Bradman’s signature, one of Mitra’s treasured possessions. Interestingly, Mitra is no exception because Bradman, to millions of Indian cricket followers, is no less than a deity.

From the very start, cricket has been a vehicle for both Australia and India to express national achievement. Even when bilateral relations were at a low ebb between 1950 and 1970, cricket was seen as the natural cultural bridge between the two nations. Yet, this was a rather uneasy phase of cricket relations, with Australian teams unwillingly going to the subcontinent and Indian teams barely supported down under because of their poor playing abilities (indeed only one Indian team toured Australia during this period — 1967/68). In fact, this period of tension in sport parallels the Australian Government’s neglect of India. With Australia continuing to view India from an Australian/Western Cold War stance until the early 1970s, there was no incentive for Australian cricketers like Bradman through Benaud to the Chappells to perceive a sub-continent tour as special. Even when personal friendships flourished between players such as Bradman and Hazare, and individual players earned popularity like Bedi in Australia and Benaud in India, they did little to promote deeper social and political exchanges between the countries.

Matters changed substantially under the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam (1972-75) whose enlightened attitude towards India, and Asia generally, helped create Australian attitudes capable of more independent foreign policy formation, influenced more by regional factors than by the imperatives of its traditional Western alliance. This was helped by the enthusiastic response to Whitlam by the equally independent Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. Improved political relations impacted upon cricket as well as allowing Australia’s more structured economy to harness the economic worth of cricket in India.