Ever since former Australia skipper Steve Waugh declared India as the ‘Final Frontier’ — and failed to conquer it — the rivalry between the two proud cricketing nations has grown into arguably the sport’s pre-eminent face-off.

Australia’s clashes with England and India’s with Pakistan have both history and needle, but they ceased to work as contests among equals for significant tracts of time.

The frequency with which India and Australia now play each other, and the competitive quality of the on-field action, bear testament to this. Independent India took on Australia in 15 Test series until the turn of the millennium. Since then, there have been 14 tours in half the duration. In 55 Tests since January 2000, India has won 22 and Australia 20.

Such is the heft — both sporting and commercial — that the two countries have now resolved to compete only in five-Test series, with limited-overs cricket acting as monotony-breakers and additional coffer-fillers.

Currently, they are locked in another battle, this time Down Under in coloured clothing, for such is the fans’ insatiable hunger to watch these nations play.

Ace journalist and cricket writer Gideon Haigh’s Indian Summers: Australia versus India – Cricket’s Battle of the Titans is a neat compilation charting this great rivalry arc. It mostly deals with the game played in pristine whites, with the exceptions being the 2023 ODI World Cup final and 2024 T20 World Cup Super 8 clash.

Interesting stories

A collection of his previously published reports and essays, there is a staccato feel to the book — there are as many as 74 chapters in just 341 pages. But Haigh’s prose, characterised by brevity and glorious metaphors, makes it an engaging read.

The historical sweep is impressive. There are interesting stories highlighting the relationship between Vijay Hazare and spinner Clarrie Grimmett, the early tours to the sub-continent wherein Australian cricketers were condescending and insensitive towards most-things Indian — a tinge of which, unfortunately, reflects in Haigh’s writing as well — and the Indian connection to the birth of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket.

Short but elegant profiles of the likes of Bishen Singh Bedi and Sunil Gavaskar, first-rate accounts of the second-ever tied Test in Chennai in 1986 and the vivid description of the atmosphere at the Eden Gardens in 2001 when VVS Laxman made his legendary 281 — considered an inflection point in the rivalry — embellish the work.

Haigh’s writings on two of the previous era’s greatest batters, Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar, are educative. And the time travel he indulges in by going back to the era of Bradman allows readers to form a mental map of how the art of batsmanship has evolved.

Independence has marked Haigh as a journalist, and here, he is searing in his criticism of Australia’s off-putting masculine cricket culture, the 2000s-era self-righteous behaviour and their shenanigans on the playing field.

An example of how this attitude affected sport downstream is told through the story of a 15-year-old boy, Bill, a bright young cricketer who lost interest in the game because his coaches “impressed on their charges how important it was to be verbally aggressive.”

No book on India-Australia rivalry will be complete without the inclusion of Virat Kohli, the enigmatic and in-your-face former India captain, whose singular cricketing obsession was to win an away series in Australia. Under his leadership India won 2-1 in 2018-19, a first-ever success Down Under, and it is no surprise that the biggest chapter, comprising 18 pages, is reserved for the batting legend from Delhi.

Similar treatment, though, is missing for the leg-spinning great Shane Warne and his iconic duels with various Indian batters. This may perhaps be because Haigh has dedicated an entire biography to the maverick cricketer, On Warne, after having initially engaged with him in One Summer, Every Summer, an Ashes journal published in 1995.

The final third of the volume is majorly about the 16 Tests the two countries clashed in a six-year span from 2017 to 2023. These matches were spread across four series and India won all four — two at home and two away — by the same scoreline 2-1, a victorious streak that Australia has never managed against India.

Australia’s 3-1 victory earlier this year presented a reset, and perhaps an invitation to Haigh to extend the narrative arc with his delightful pen.

The reviewer is special correspondent, sports, The Hindu

Title: Indian Summers: Australia versus India, Cricket’s Battle of the Titans

Author: Gideon Haigh

Publisher: Westland Sport

Price: ₹599

Published on October 26, 2025