The Australian team received death threats from Pakistani extremists. Then, a novice tour manager made a decision which saved world cricket.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
It was 1979. Australia's cricketers were in India. Bob Merriman was their tour manager.
He wasn't initially meant to be there.
But Merriman soon was the central figure in a flashpoint in which the lives of Australia's cricketers were threatened and relations imperiled between the sport's powers.
The largely untold tale involves Kerry Packer and Don Bradman, Australian and Indian governments and their emissaries, Pakistani extremists, the disputed territory of Kashmir, India's army, and cricketers such as Kim Hughes and Jim Higgs.
And Merriman.
He had never been overseas before being called-up to manage the team a month before departure when the wife of incumbent manager Sam Loxton fell ill.
Merriman, if he ultimately made a different decision, has little doubt of the ramifications.
"The relationship with India ... would have been just destroyed forever," Merriman told AAP on Thursday.
"And that would have meant in subsequent years ... the only relationships we would have had in cricket would have probably been New Zealand and England.
"Because India from there on, from 1980, 81, maybe 82, they dominated world cricket in organisational structure.
"They had West Indies covered, they had South Africa covered, they had Zimbabwe covered. It just wasn't the Asian bloc - and it still isn't."
The crisis centred around Australia's tour game in Srinagar, Kashmir, ahead of a six-Test series in India.
The tour from August to November, in the maddening Indian summer heat, was a "goodwill tour", Merriman said.
Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket and the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) had just struck peace - with a caveat from the media mogul.
Instead of India touring in the Australia summer of 1979/80, Packer insisted on hosting renowned drawcards England and the West Indies.
"So a side deal had to be done with India to go and play six Tests in India at that time of the year," Merriman said.
"It was a goodwill tour to try and square off the fact we had knocked them back."
On August 21, 1979, the Australians left for Madras. They arrived a day late - their Air India plane blew an engine after a Singapore stopover.
On landing in Madras, Merriman was asked by Indian official if the team was still going to Srinagar, Kashmir, for their scheduled tour opener from September 1.
"I said of course we are," Merriman said.
What he didn't know was Australia's government had told Indian counterparts that the team wouldn't be going to Srinagar.
The team had been threatened with death by the Pakistan Liberation Organisation if they travelled to Kashmir.
"What became obvious was that Andrew Peacock - the minister for foreign affairs in the Fraser government at the time - had got this message somehow that if we went to Srinagar our safety wouldn't be guaranteed and we would be attacked," Merriman said.
"He passed that on to the Australian Cricket Board and the chairman of the day was Bob Parish and he said we wouldn't go.
"Nobody told me."Â
For more than a week, the Australian cricketers sweltered at training in oppressive Madras heat.
"The humidity was shocking. Even (legspinner) Jim Higgs couldn't last four overs in the heat and Hoggy (paceman Rodney Hogg) was lucky to get two balls," Merriman said.
"It was a difficult place to stay."
All the while, Merriman absorbed information about the Srinagar threat from everyone from the Indian prime minister's office to Australia's high commission to AAP's touring journalist, John Coomber.
Was the threat credible?
"That's the unanswered question," he said.
"Certainly the Australian officials in Canberra gave it high quality to convince Peacock not to go - and the difficulty was undoing that advice. The direction from the foreign affairs department was don't go.
"To be quite honest with you, I was uncertain what was going on because sitting in Madras with all the advice I was getting from the (Indian government) advisers and the Australian high commission in Delhi, it didn't seem to marry up with what was coming out of Canberra."
There was also the substantial ACB backdrop, of Australia the cricket nation needing to re-pay India.
"(ACB chairman) Parish said to me 'look, we have got to do something to help the Indians, they supported us during World Series Cricket and Peacock is saying don't go - we have got to find a solution," Merriman said.
Merriman called in the players for a meeting. They unanimously voted to go to Srinagar.
"They'd had a gutful of sitting in the heat in Madras, practising in terrible weather," he said.
"They said 'we just want to go and play cricket', so I could go back to the board and say 'the team want to go, I think we should go'.
"The emergency committee of the board at the time was Parish, Don Bradman and Tim Caldwell. Bob Parish said 'that is manna from heaven when you say you're going to go'.
"So we went.
"There was some doubt about the authenticity of the threat but every threat has got to be taken seriously.
"I wouldn't have put my life at risk or the life of anybody else at risk obviously, having received a commitment of extraordinary levels of security which was amply demonstrated."
Some 5000 troops manned the air strip when the Australians flew in.
Indian officials removed all other guests from the team hotel, telling them the hot water system had failed.
About 75 army personnel guarded the Australians at the hotel and more watched their every move.
And the tour match?
"The game itself was disappointing because the wicket was not great and we didn't perform very well," Merriman said.
"We managed to just scramble out with a draw over three days."
India then won the six-Test series, 2-0.
Australian Associated Press