When Indian, Aus cricketers remembered Gandhi

It was the Indian cricket team’s first tour of Australia and the players, led by Lala Amarnath, looked distraught as they stood in silence in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, who had been assassinated less than a week before in Delhi.

Advertisement

The rare photograph of that emotional moment taken before the start of the fifth Test on February 6, 1948, captures ones attention as one enters the MCG library, housed inside the stadium.

There is a treasure trove of photographs, score sheets, articles and scrapbooks from the historic tour displayed inside the 150-year-old library.

The Australian team was led by the legendary Sir Donald Bradman, whose ‘Invincibles’ had returned undefeated from their 1948 tour of England, while Amarnath was the captain of independent India’s first cricket team to tour Down Under.

It was also Bradman’s last Test on home soil.

“Pankaj Gupta was the manager of the team during the 1947-48 tour. The most memorable picture is of the Indian and Australian sides lined up to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi... the other one is of CK Naidu being caught by Bradman and one where Bradman is facing Vinoo Mankad,” David Studham, the MCG librarian told PTI Bhasha during a tour of the stadium.

“There are also wonderful scrapbooks put together by Australian children in the 1940s and 1960s. The Indian team’s maiden tour of Australia was also highlighted in the library journal ‘The Yorker’ in the early 2000s,” said Sutham, who has been associated with the library for three decades.

He said the MCG library collection consists of over a million items, including periodicals, newspapers, microfilms, videotapes and CD ROMs.

“This is probably one of the best sports-related collections in the world. We have around 8,000 rare books, pamphlets and manuscripts. The emphasis is on cricket but there is a healthy representation of around 119 sports, including football, tennis, golf, Olympics, among others,” said Sutham.

“We recently celebrated 150 years of this library, which was established on September 6, 1873, with 13 bound volumes of The Australasian newspaper from 1866 to 1873 being donated by its proprietor. We also have items dating back to the time when cricket was first played... also some rare material on women’s cricket,” he said.