Umpires offered a walkout. I said 'we’re here to play, not sit in dressing room': Rahane recalls Sydney racism episode

Ajinkya Rahane said that the team demanded those hurling racist abuse at the Indian players be evicted from the ground and refused to walk out of the ground when the umpires suggested that they could do so.

India's 2020-21 Test series in Australia went from being a potentially disastrous one to what has since been described by many as the team's greatest ever comeback victory in the longest format of the game. India had been thrashed in the first Test after falling to a record low score of 36 all-out. Their talismanic captain Virat Kohli left the series after that while ace fast bowler Mohammed Shami was out injured for the rest of the series.

Ajinkya Rahane and Mohammed Siraj talking to umpire Paul Reiffel in Sydney Test

A number of senior players like Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jasprit Bumrah also got injured as the series went along and yet, an almost second-string Indian team ended up becoming the first team in over three decades to beat Australia in a Test match at the Gabba and won the series 2-1.

While there was the usual banter during the series that one would expect while facing Australia, there was a particularly nasty incident during the drawn third Test in Sydney. Play had been held up for a while during the fourth day of the Test as the Indians complained to the umpires that a section of the crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground were hurling racist abuse at them.

“(We) insisted on getting the abusers out of the ground,” Ajinkya Rahane, who stood in as India's captain from the second Test in the series in Kohli's absence, told ESPNCricinfo.

“When Siraj again came to me (on the fourth day, after being abused the day before), I told the umpires that (they) need to take action and we won't play till then.”

Rahane revealed that the umpires had told the Indian players to walk off the field if they don't want to play.

"The umpires said that you can't stall the game and can walk out if you want. We said that we are here to play and not sit in the dressing room and insisted on getting the abusers out of the ground. It was important to support our colleague given the situation he had been through. What happened in Sydney was completely wrong," said Rahane.

The suspension of play went on for 10 minutes and it resumed only after a group of people were evicted from the stands.