Indian cricket team in Australia in 2024–25

Indian cricket team in Australia in 2024–25
Border–Gavaskar Trophy
	Australia	India
Dates	22 November 2024 – 7 January 2025
Captains	Pat Cummins	Rohit Sharma
Test series

The India cricket team is touring Australia from November 2024 to January 2025 to play five Test matches and three first-class warm-up matches against Australia cricket team.^[1] The Test matches will form part of the 2023–2025 ICC World Test Championship.^[2][3] In March 2024, the Cricket Australia (CA) announced the venues for the Test series.^[4] It will be the first Test series between India and Australia comprising five matches since 1992.^[5] On 26 March 2024, the CA confirmed the full tour itinerary.^[6]

India had retained the Border–Gavaskar Trophy after defeating Australia 2–1 in the previous series in 2023.^[7][8]

Cricket Australia announced their summer cricket schedule in March 2024.^[9] The series will be played at the main cricket grounds in Australia's five largest cities. It will be the first five-match test series to be played between the two nations since India's tour of Australia in 1991/92.

Test	Location	Stadium	Capacity	Date
1st	Perth	Perth Stadium	61,266	22–26 November
2nd	Adelaide	Adelaide Oval	53,500	6–10 December
3rd	Brisbane	The Gabba	37,000	14–18 December
4th	Melbourne	Melbourne Cricket Ground	100,024	26–30 December
5th	Sydney	Sydney Cricket Ground	48,000	3–7 January

Australia[10]	India[11]
Pat Cummins (c) Scott Boland Alex Carey (wk) Josh Hazlewood Travis Head Josh Inglis (wk) Usman Khawaja Marnus Labuschagne Nathan Lyon Mitchell Marsh Nathan McSweeney Steve Smith Mitchell Starc	Rohit Sharma (c) Jasprit Bumrah (vc) Ravichandran Ashwin Akash Deep Abhimanyu Easwaran Shubman Gill Ravindra Jadeja Yashasvi Jaiswal Rishabh Pant (wk) Sarfaraz Khan Virat Kohli Prasidh Krishna Dhruv Jurel (wk) KL Rahul Harshit Rana Nitish Kumar Reddy Mohammed Siraj Washington Sundar

India named an 18-member squad for the test series along with Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini and Khaleel Ahmed as travelling reserves.^[12] On 17 November, Shubman Gill was ruled out of the first Test with a fractured thumb of his left hand, during the intra-squad training match at the WACA.^[13][14]

India A Tour of Australia 2024
Part of India Tour of Australia 2024–25
Date	31 October 2024 – 10 November 2024
Location	Australia
Result	Australia A won the series 2–0
Teams Australia A India A Captains Nathan McSweeney Ruturaj Gaikwad Most runs Nathan McSweeney (166) Beau Webster (145) Devdutt Padikkal (151) Dhruv Jurel (148) Most wickets Brendan Doggett (7) Beau Webster (7) Mukesh Kumar (11) Prasidh Krishna (10)
← →

Australia A[15]	India A[16]
Nathan McSweeney (c) Cameron Bancroft Jordan Buckingham Scott Boland Cooper Connolly Ollie Davies Brendan Doggett Marcus Harris Liam Hatcher Sam Konstas Nathan McAndrew Todd Murphy Michael Neser Fergus O'Neill Jimmy Peirson (wk) Josh Philippe (wk) Corey Rocchiccioli Mark Steketee Beau Webster	Ruturaj Gaikwad (c) Abhimanyu Easwaran (vc) Ricky Bhui Dhruv Jurel (wk) Baba Indrajith Devdutt Padikkal KL Rahul (wk) Sai Sudharsan Tanush Kotian Nitish Kumar Reddy Manav Suthar Ishan Kishan (wk) Abishek Porel (wk) Khaleel Ahmed Yash Dayal Mukesh Kumar Navdeep Saini Prasidh Krishna

The tour was kickstarted by India A touring Australia from 31st October to 10th November, ending just 5 days before the official Test series starts. Cricket Australia announced their Australia A squad in early October 2024, naming Nathan McSweeney as their captain.^[15] Board of Control for Cricket in India announced India A cricket team's squad in October 2024, naming Ruturaj Gaikwad as the side's captain along with Abhimanyu Easwaran as the vice-captain.^[16]

India 'A' played two games against Australia 'A'. The first of those matches was played at the Great Barrier Reef Arena from October 31 to November 3 while the second was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from November 7 to 10. The first Test will be played at the new Perth Stadium from November 22.

While announcing the international schedule, Peter Roach, CA's head of Cricket Operations and Scheduling, had said in May: "The 2024-25 summer is highlighted by the five-Test Border-Gavaskar series, the first five-Test series between the two giants in more than 30 years. To have that running simultaneously with the women's ODIs and preceded by two significant Australia A v India A matches will be terrific for our fans."

Prior to the start of the series, Mark Steketee and his replacement Liam Hatcher were both ruled out due to injury and were replaced by Brendan Doggett.^[17] On 3 November 2024, KL Rahul and Dhruv Jurel were added to the squad for the second unofficial Test.^[18][19]

On the day 4 of the test match, Indian wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan and the on-field umpire Shawn Craig could be heard on stump-mic arguing about the condition of the ball as the umpires thought that the ball has been scratched intentionally, putting allegations upon the Indian cricket team for ball tampering, to which the Indian cricket team including the captain Ruturaj Gaikwad and wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan opposed and argued over as they had been maintaining the ball to generate reverse swing in their attempt to make a comeback in the game.^[20][21]

On the start day 4 of the first un-official 4 day test match, Indian Captain Ruturaj Gaikwad approached the on-field umpire Shawn Craig questioning about the ball which they had been given was in different condition than what they had been playing with, Indian wicketkeeper Ishan Kishan and the on-field umpire Craig could be heard on stump-mic arguing about the condition of the ball which they had played with the day prior, as the umpires thought that the ball has been scratched intentionally, thus putting allegations upon the Indian cricket team for ball tampering, to which the Indian cricket team including the captain Ruturaj and wicket-keeper Ishan opposed to and argued over as they had been maintaining the ball to generate reverse swing in their attempt to make a comeback on the next day.

Caught on the stump mic, Craig firmly dismissed their petition saying

"You scratch it, we change the ball,”

continuing with

“No more discussion, let’s play. This is not a discussion.”

Kishan however anguished by this, questioned their decision saying

“So we have to play with this ball? That’s a very stupid decision.”

the on-field umpire Craig did not hold back and replied

“Excuse me. You’ll be on report for dissent. That’s inappropriate behaviour, It is because of your actions we changed the ball. "

to which Kishan was heard replying

"Yeah ok, thank you"

However, Three hours after the match finished, Cricket Australia issued a statement, clarifying what had actually happened citing that the ball was changed due to deterioration and no further actions will be taken, regarding Kishan's comment which could be heard LIVE on stump-mic, on-field umpire Craig cautioned the Indian wicket-keeper with no further actions being taken.^[23][24]

• Series home at ESPNcricinfo