5 Biggest Cricket Fights in the history of India vs Australia

Biggest Cricket Fights in India vs Australia: IPL and all are good but have you seen India and Australia play cricket? Yeah, cricket fans must be going through those feelings right now as they anticipate another thrilling series between two veteran cricketing nations. These two countries have many things in common but nothing unites them better than the game of cricket. But points of exasperation do not remained far away when India and Australia collide on the field. Let’s take a look at the biggest cricket fights from India and Australia encounters.

Sunil Gavaskar and Dennis Lillee
The history between India and Australia goes well beyond the 80s. Details are something like this: India were on the tour of Australia in 1981. Hosts were leading by 1-0 in a three-match series when both teams reached MCG for the final match. Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar was struggling with his own form on that tour. He finally got his touch back in the last innings of the series when India were behind the eight ball with a first-innings deficit of 182 runs. He along with Chetan Chauhan had put on 165 runs for the opening wicket when Dennis Lillee brought one back significantly to hit Sunil Gavaskar’s pads. Umpire Rex Whitehead declared it out LBW but Indian captain was clearly unhappy with the decision. He thought there was a clear edge from his bat and stood his ground for a while.

When Sunil Gavaskar started walking towards the dressing room, Dennis Lillee said something in his ears. Already annoyed by a string of poor umpiring decisions against India, Sunil Gavaskar instructed Chetan Chauhan to walk-off to pavilion along with him in protest. Latter had to obey his captain’s call as both continued their march towards the boundary line. Only at the crossover, Indian manager Shahid Durrani and his deputy Bapu Nadkarni persuaded Chetan Chauhan to resume his innings as temperatures settled down in both the camps.

Michael Slater’s moment of madness
The fight in cricket fans can’t stop talking of. This incident happened during the famous test series of 2001. In India’s second innings, Indian vice-captain Rahul Dravid was on the crease. He pulled one of the deliveries but failed to keep it along the ground as ball looped in the air towards Michael Slater who was standing at short square-leg. Michael Slater dived forward and looked like him taking a brilliant grab. He started celebrating with his teammates as Rahul Dravid stood his ground. On-field umpires took the matters upstairs where TV umpire declared it not out as ball seemed to have touched the ground.

Michael Slater was furious with the decision and started his argument with the umpires. He also abused Rahul Dravid on standing his ground even after his confirmation of the catch. Rahul Dravid was well within his rights to stand there and only person wrong here was Michael Slater. Later on, Australian captain Steve Waugh and Michael Slater apologized to Rahul Dravid after the match.

‘Monkeygate’
The biggest cricket fight of recent times. When India landed on Australian shores in late 2007, they were hopeful of going one step further to achieve that elusive test series win against the champion Australian side. In return, what they actually got was a tour full of controversies. There were many in the series but we are going to talk about one of the watershed moments in India & Australia rivalry. In the second test match at Sydney, India were chasing a formidable total by Australia in the first innings. Sachin Tendulkar was doing his usual Sydney rituals and was joined by Harbhajan Singh on early day 3. Both had started to stitch together a partnership of substance that could have hurt Australia.

Now, between the overs when both the batsmen were in the middle of pitch together, Andrew Symonds walked across them. He and Harbhajan Singh seemed to have engaged in a war of words during that time. After the end of day’s play, Andrew Symonds and Australia officially lodged a complaint against Indian off-spinner with an accusation of racial comments against the Australian. Harbhajan Singh defended himself with an argument saying that he was speaking in Hindi which was understood by Andrew Symonds as ‘Monkey’. Match referee banned Harbhajan Singh for 3 test matches which didn’t go well at all with Indian team and BCCI threatened to pull out of the tour. Team management appealed against the ban and both groups appeared at Adelaide’s Federal Court in an official court hearing. In the end, Harbhajan Singh was not found guilty of the offence and three-match ban was replaced with a fine of 50% match fees. Whole Australian team had a feeling of being let down by their own board in fear of potential financial losses.

Gautam Gambhir’s elbow!
In 2008, India were hosting Australia in a four-match test series. Third match of the series was at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and India were leading the series by 1-0. Local boy Gautam Gambhir was in the middle of a famous innings when he had an altercation with Shane Watson and Simon Katich. These were a pretty heated 10-15 mins in a winter afternoon of Delhi. At one point, Gautam Gambhir elbowed Shane Watson while running the second run. This thing didn’t go well with the match-referee Chris Broad who handed one match ban to the Delhi opener. Gautam Gambhir was found guilty of a charge under 2.4 as any degree of physical contact is not acceptable in the game of cricket. Shane Watson was also fined hefty amount of his match-fees for verbal confrontations.

“Speak in English!”
India were on a long tour to Australia in 2014-15 which also included ICC cricket world cup. Before that WC, India were playing a tri-series with the hosts Australia and England. In a league match against Australia at MCG, Rohit Sharma was playing beautifully and was on his way towards another hundred in the series. David Warner threw a ball towards Indian opener in an attempted run-out. The ball seemed to have touched Rohit’s pad before going away from wicket-keeper Brad Haddin’s reach. Indians decided to run an over-throw on that and David Warner was not pleased with the same.

David Warner clearly had an argument with Rohit Sharma on the overthrow. He was confident about ball touching Rohit Sharma’s pads before ricocheting over and that run was not in spirit of the game according to him. At one point of time during the argument, David Warner famously instructed Rohit Sharma to speak in English!