At the time, there was nothing much about the Australian summer of 1991–92 to arrest its easy slide into cricket past, the home team winning Test and one-day series easily, India and the West Indies slipping out of the country to the sound of their own feet. Only in hindsight has more been detected to it—so very much more.
For Australian fans in particular, it was a summer of four fascinating premonitions. They enjoyed their first glimpses of Shane Warne, of Brian Lara, of Sourav Ganguly and of Sachin Tendulkar—of the last, a baby-faced nineteen year old who blasted more than 1000 international runs in those few months, the impression was nigh unforgettable. In a triumph, it would have been special; in a badly beaten side, it bordered on uncanny. By summer’s end, Allan Miller was writing in Allan’s Annual: ‘Bow, bowlers, to the great and mighty Tendulkar!’
Think back to international cricket circa 1991–92. It’s not twenty years ago, but it seems an eternity. There were seven full Test nations. There were only two umpires per Test, and the standing officials of that Australian season were all locals—thus the sense of martyred grievance when eight lbws befell India in Adelaide, and only two were upheld against Australians.
India had not visited Australia for six years, had played one Test in the preceding fifteen months, and it showed. In match after match, batsmen shambled across their stumps, fended at balls they should have left, ducked balls they should have played. A much-vaunted line-up steadily ran out of vaunts: Sanjay Manjrekar seemed incapable of an attacking stroke, Kris Srikkanth of a defensive stroke, Dilip Vengsarkar of any stroke at all.
Vaunts of Tendulkar, meanwhile, steadily became a chorus, especially after he became the youngest player to score a Test century in Australia, taking particular toll of the callow Warne. In the crowd at a one-day match in Sydney soon after was seen a banner: ‘Oh, what a feeling … Tendulkar!’ The invocation alluded to a popular television advertisement for Toyota: the tyro was being added to the common culture.
The innings that really quickened the pulse, however, was played on the other side of the continent, in conditions quite opposite, and also quiet alien to those in which Tendulkar had been trained. Perth’s WACA ground in those days was a little like a lonely, windswept pass in the Wild West, where ambuscades awaited unwary travellers. The bounce was almost vertical, the carry far and fizzing. Not even Australian teams liked it much: the arena was known for sparse, parochial crowds mainly interested in watching fellow Westralians.
On their first visit to the WACA that summer, in November 1991, India had been bundled out by Western Australia for 64, a prelude of their future problems with the rising delivery. In pursuit of Australia’s 346 in the Fifth Test three months later, they looked shaky at once. Srikkanth was hit a glancing blow on the helmet by Craig McDermott, and turned to watch it bang into the sightscreen after a few bounces, rolling his eyes expressively. By stumps on the second day, the tourists were a punch-drunk five for 135, and lost their nightwatchman without addition the next morning.
By this stage, Tendulkar was poised to counterattack, and did so thrillingly. New cap Paul Reiffel thought the Indians looked ‘jaded’ during the Test, as well they might have trailing 0-3. For Tendulkar, though, there was the familiar challenge of Australia but also the new assignment of number four: he welcomed it, his tiny figure crossing the crease to square cut at the top of the bounce, easing into line to drive down the ground, swaying from harm at the inevitable short stuff.
The people of Perth had, as was their wont in those days, stayed away in droves: there were fewer than 5000 spectators, and the Channel Nine cameras could not avoid panning across empty terraces. When Tendulkar stood on his toes to slash McDermott, Reiffel, Merv Hughes and Mike Whitney, the crack from his bat seemed to echo round the stands like the report of a Lee-Enfield. Tendulkar cut, in fact, more often than seemed wise, and at balls closer to his body than a purist probably would have liked; it was the cricket of a batsman trusting his nerve, following instinct rather than instruction. Every ball looked likely to get him out until it came near him, when it was subdued, controlled, countered.
In truth, it was a race against time, with the innings expiring at the other end, a race into which Tendulkar hurled himself with 81 between commencement and lunch, racing from 50 to 100 in 55 deliveries, and putting on 81 in ninety-one minutes with Kiran More: an Indian ninth-wicket record against Australia. Nor had the cares of cricket quite taken their toll on Tendulkar. When he drove McDermott through mid-on for four to reach his hundred, he removed his helmet to show a brief, boyish smile, unselfconsciously reminding onlookers that he was only just old enough to vote, and barely looked old enough to shave.
When Tendulkar skewered Whitney to backward point to finish on 114 from 161 balls with sixteen fours soon after, the Perth crowd did their best to honour him: 5000 had a reasonable stab at sounding like 50 000. More, inspired, prolonged the innings another 32 runs and thirty-three minutes, limiting India’s arrears to 74 if only slightly narrowing its eventual defeat margin of 300 runs: it would be some time before India abroad were a fraction as formidable as the team they were at home.
Nonetheless, against the evidence of the results, there was something to Sunil Gavaskar’s remarks after the series: ‘India got a lot from this tour’. What might have been a rout at Perth was really only a defeat: Australia would lose the corresponding Test of the following summer in just over two days, by which time India would be utterly annihilating England. A year after that, Tendulkar, who had arrived in Australia with a Test average less than 40, had a Test average greater than 50, and there was no looking back—until, perhaps, now.