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 …