Australia’s Brendan Creevey and Shane Lee were the joint-top wicket-takers in the series with nine scalps each. Harbhajan Singh and Dodda Ganesh were India’s best bowlers, having taken eight wickets apiece.
Even though the series may not have had as much of an impact as the ICC would have wanted to and stayed on the fringes of American consciousness at best, the early seeds for cricket’s foray into the US, which was realised in the form of the 2024 T20 World Cup, had been planted.
Australia A vs India A 1999 series brief cricket scores
- Match 1: Australia A 192/7 in 47 overs (Andrew Symonds 77; Dodda Ganesh 3/36) beat India A 115/10 in 34.1 overs (Devang Gandhi 15; Brendan Creevey 3/22) by 77 runs.
- Match 2: Australia A 129/10 in 35 overs (Corey Richards 22; Sridharan Sriram 4/23) lost to India A 133/5 in 30.1 overs (Mohammad Kaif 38; Gerard Denton 2/30) by five wickets
- Match 3: Australia A 160/9 in 40 overs (Corey Richards 34; Virender Sehwag 2/13) beat India A 62/10 in 23 overs (Devang Gandhi 9, Vijay Bharadwaj 9; Andrew Symonds 6/14) by 98 runs
- Match 4: India A 128/10 in 38.1 overs (VVS Laxman 45; Brett Lee 4/32) lost to Australia A 131/1 in 19.3 overs (Ryan Campbell 61*; Sridharan Sriram 1/26) by nine wickets
- Match 5: India A 121/10 in 44.3 overs (Devendra Bundela 43; Brendan Creevey 3/13) lost to Australia A 115/5 (revised target) in 23.1 overs (Andrew Symonds 62*; Harbhajan Singh 2/37) by five wickets
Interestingly, all matches were fairly low-scoring affairs with batters struggling to cope with the underprepared surface at the Woodley Cricket Field.
Before 1999, LA did have occasional brushes with international cricket stars in exhibition matches.
While Border played a match in preparation for the Ashes tour in LA in 1983, Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar was involved in several exhibition matches on makeshift pitches during the 1970s and 80s in New Jersey, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
Like in 1999, the pitches were a tad suspect and not always at the best of venues.
“There were no turf pitches there so a mat would be put on the ground and we would play on that,” Gavaskar recalled during an interview with Economic Times. “Most games were in a park, not a proper ground, till 1989, when we played in baseball stadia.”
In 2015, a host of retired cricket stars descended on LA for the third match of a three-match Cricket All-Stars Series between two teams spearheaded by the legendary Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne at the iconic Dodger Stadium in front of over 20,000 fans.
Warne’s Warriors already had an unassailable 2-0 lead heading into the final match of the series and would win in LA to complete a clean sweep.
The 1999 Moov America Challenge might have slipped under the radar globally, but for Los Angeles it was a rare taste of high-level cricket.
As the city prepares to host the sport at LA 2028 in what will be a landmark moment for both cricket and the Olympics, the once-forgotten footnote takes on far greater significance.