Rick Darling with a bouncer, causing him to be retired hurt. Summary The tour established Kim Hughes and Allan Border as test batsmen. However it was a disappointing tour for Australian strike bowler Rodney Hogg. Hughes thought key problems were the failure of the Australian openers to get off to a good start, and dropping of crucial catches. Hughes: Not enough of us came up to scratch... Rodney Hogg was disappointing. He took a long while to get to grips with the conditions. We expected our openers to play an important role, but Rick Darling, Andrew Hilditch and Graeme Wood struggled the whole way. That was a big blow to us. In the words of Samir Chopra: The series had many moments of personal success for Hughes' team, but the Australians were always just a bit outgunned and outmatched, and given that they were never very happy, the result was a foregone conclusion. Still, they showed fight, their batsmen played spin reasonably (Border and Hughes especially well), and their captain showed himself to be more enterprising than his Indian counterpart. As was their wont, and still is now, India failed to win more comprehensively against a much weaker team.Wisden'' summed up the tour for the Australians: The main Australian gain of the tour was the tremendous advance made by two batsmen, Hughes and Border. Between the first Test and the last there was a marked development in Hughes's technique of playing spin bowling, and happily the heavy burden of captaincy had no adverse effect on his batting... He passed the half-century mark in every Test but one and could certainly have made more runs had he not batted as positively and purposefully as he did. Border... started the series more strongly than he finished it. But as his form declined, another left-hander, Yallop, came into his own. The most experienced player in the side, Yallop was at his best when batting conditions were most difficult. In the last two Tests, he opened the innings and filled the rôle with distinction. If he did not make an earlier impact on the series it was partly because, more than once, he was dismissed in unfortunate ways. A major weakness of the Australian batting was its fragility at the top of the order... The best Australian opening partnership in the entire series was one of 32. Yet this was not Australia's only weakness,