Last Three Days Of India vs Australia 2014 Adelaide Test Felt Like War: Ian Gould

India-Australia have had a plethora of heated moments on the field during their storied rivalry in the past 20-25 years. With Australia tough as nails and a side who believes in getting into the skin of their opposition and their Indian counterparts giving it back with disdain, sometimes the heated moments have taken on an ugly turn on the cricket field.

Ian Gould, who played county cricket during his playing days and someone who was a part of the elite panel of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Umpires have opened up on how Australia used to ‘railroad’ teams on the field and how they had gone too far ahead with sledging in years leading into the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.

“They used to railroad teams a little bit and it got out of hand. You would stand back and think ‘wow’,” Ian Gould told BBC’s radio Vaughan and Tuffers show.

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Ian Gould opens up on the 2014 India vs Australia Test at the Adelaide Oval

Gould went on to reminisce the 2014 India-Australia Test at the Adelaide Oval where he revealed that the last three days felt like a war.

“The first real incident during that time was Australia against India in Adelaide shortly after poor Phillip Hughes had passed away (in 2014). It was the most surreal game of cricket for two days that I have ever known. But for the next three days it was like a war out there,” Gould added.

The 2014 India-Australia Adelaide Oval Test is best remembered for the twin hundreds that Virat Kohli scored in his first Test match as captain. It was a Test match played in the backdrop of the unfortunate death of opener Phil Hughes and the way that the game turned out in the end, it couldn’t have been a better tribute to the Australian. But, Ian Gould’s remarks may have taken some shean of it.

Virat had successfully shrugged off his demons of that fateful England tour with a sublime 115 in the first innings but it was his 141 in the second, that really incarnated his place in the echelons of the folklore. Needing 362 to win on the final, Murali Vijay’s 99 and Virat Kohli’s outstanding 141 had taken India on the cusp of a miraculous win, but a late middle-order collapse in the final session ensured that it eventually ended in a 48-run-loss. The Men in Blue went on to eventually lose the 2014 India-Australia series 0-2 but the scoreline did not reflect how keenly contested the series was.

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