Kolkata: This isn’t an eulogy, for the Gabba won’t be pulled down till after the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. The closing act has been long announced though, fittingly in this summer’s Ashes, setting a date for the quiet decommissioning of Australia’s original fortress.
You read that right. Not the WACA ground of Perth, Gabba’s where Australia have mostly consistently rubbed in their home dominance. Of the 67 Tests Gabba has hosted till date, Australia have won 42, giving them a win percentage of 62.68%, significantly higher than WACA’s 56.81%. More staggering though is how in comparison to the 11 matches Australia have lost at the WACA between 1970 and 2017, Gabba has witnessed just 10 defeats in 93 years.
Four of those, curiously, have come against West Indies. Take out the defeats of 2024 and 1968 and only twice have Australia lost to that world-beating West Indies team in 1984 and 1988 at the Gabba.
WACA, however, witnessed five losses, not only on those two tours but also in 1975, 1993 and 1997 when West Indies were either in the ascending or slipping from their prime.
These are telling numbers if you believe that some turfs can hold that sort of sway over and above the consolidated grit of visiting teams. Which also says something about India who have been unbeaten at the Gabba two tours in a row, starting with the epochal win in 2021. Gabba’s record between 1988 and 2021? 24 wins, 7 draws.
From India’s perspective, 2021 was a watershed victory that not only stamped their inflating status as impressive tourists but also forced the most hard-nosed critics to sit up and take note of a changing world order.
Also possibly the only time in recent years that India were more than a sum of their talent as standby bowlers kept them in the game before Shubman Gill’s tempered charge blended with Rishabh Pant’s exuberance, all under the astute captaincy of Ajinkya Rahane, resulting in one of the greatest-ever chases in Test cricket.
It was also the pinnacle of a rivalry reborn at Eden Gardens and remastered at Gabba in 2003 when Sourav Ganguly chose to throw the gauntlet with a captain’s knock in the first innings.
Four wickets down for 127 had the potential to slip into the familiar narrative of disastrous starts in Australia but his 144 set the base of a stirring drawn series.
Most tours otherwise spoke of utter chaos engineered by fast bowlers even on the fifth day. The pitch was kryptonite for batters, unless you showed exceptional heart like Pant or played either straight or horizontal like homeboy Matthew Hayden.
Never quite imposing as a venue, Gabba wasn’t easy on the senses either. Bordered by Vulture Street, the turf encircled by a greyhound track in a backdrop that changed from a modest clubhouse to a concrete behemoth with glaring floodlights and visually dramatic seating pattern decided by a computer algorithm, it wasn’t exactly welcoming to tourists.
To those of us tuning in to cricket down under in the morning, routs at Perth were sobering because by 8 am the mind had been inevitably prepared to process the rock hard WACA pitch and the relentless pace bowling under an unforgiving West Australian sun.
With Gabba, however, hung an unquantifiable fear that almost always preyed on visiting batters but surprisingly held bay when Australia batted. If you missed the first hour, chances are you missed the game.
This was particularly true during the time Australia’s fast bowling was helmed by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, till the tables were turned in 1984 when Kim Hughes tearfully announced his resignation after an eight-wicket defeat to West Indies, Australia’s fifth in seven Tests against Clive Lloyd’s men.
It took Australia 24 years to reach that denouement from the high of Test cricket’s first tied match in 1960-61, a game remembered for Calypso fervour, friendly cricket and exceptional leadership of Frank Worrell under whom a 23-year-old Wes Hall bagged a match haul of nine wickets, the last of which came a nerve-wracking final over.
Hall was thrown the ball with Australia needing six to win and three wickets in hand. He took one wicket and dropped a crucial catch but luckily enough, there were two run-outs.
Sixty-four years later, when a little-known Shamar Joseph braved a toe injury to castle Australia’s hopes with 7/68, stopping them nine runs short of victory, the Gabba connection loomed large over another Caribbean miracle. It’s this history that Australia is burying for a 60,000 seater stadium to be built for the Olympics.
Cricket never romanticised the Gabba like Eden Gardens. Nor was it treated as a national landmark like the Maracana Stadium. With time it will turn into a mangled nest of steel and concrete, the hallowed turf making way for a more pragmatic use of space. There will be no trace of cricket, just debris by the ton.
Change is inevitable, and in keeping with the stoic Australian sense of pragmatism, the show must go on. But there was never any doubt that it was at the Gabba where throbbed the beating heart of Australian cricket.