HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: Tomorrow in Adelaide the fourth cricket test begins with a resurgent Australia pushing for a clean sweep of the series against India. For the tourists, the results are part of a miserable run of seven consecutive test defeats away from home, which has seen them lose the world number one ranking. However, there has been one reason to celebrate, as Mike Sexton reports.

MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: This past weekend, Adelaide's A-grade district cricketers battled it out in conditions so stifling that even the most loyal club supporters struggled to stay interested. But almost alone in the grandstand watching intently was one of the greatest Indian cricketers of all, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, a leggie, who 34 summers ago spun India to its first-ever win in this country, taking 12 wickets on the MCG.

BHAGWAT CHANDRASEKHAR, FORMER TEST CRICKETER: The final test was really a thriller. The decider, the thriller. We were chasing about 477, 480 runs. And we missed it by about 20, 25 runs. And altogether, it was a wonderful series.

MIKE SEXTON: Chandra, as he's known, was part of a spin-dominated attack that took on an Australian side depleted by World Series Cricket. Bob Simpson had been lured out of retirement to captain the young team.

BOB SIMPSON, (archive footage, 1977): I think they've learnt a lot. There's a couple of players who haven't got the runs I thought they might've got, but that takes time. I've generally been very pleased with them. They've got tremendous spirit.

MIKE SEXTON: Chandra took 28 wickets on the tour, part of an aggregate of 242 during a 15-year international career, which he ended with the extraordinary statistic of having collected more wickets than runs. However, that he was even able to hold a bat is incredible given he played without the full use of his right arm, which was withered from childhood polio.

BHAGWAT CHANDRASEKHAR: If I try to take a catch which is coming to the higher level, it is not going. So I have to take my left-hand support and lift it and then try to take the catch. It was difficult. It was pretty difficult. But otherwise it was quite normal, so where the bowling was concerned there was no problem. I was throwing with my left hand.

MIKE SEXTON: He was five years old when he contracted polio and despite the handicap wanted to be a wicketkeeper.

BHAGWAT CHANDRASEKHAR: I was keeping wickets initially, and then I thought I can become a (inaudible) bowler. I started bowling fast. I had said them, but I presumed that action was such and then I was bowling like that. Then I said let me become Jim Laker. Let me become Richie Benaud.

MIKE SEXTON: Chandra never lost his child-like enthusiasm for the sport or for Australia and as his international career came to an end, he agreed to play a season with Adelaide club Tea Tree Gully, which was a young side that included future test player Damien Martyn.

ROB ZADOW, FORMER CAPTAIN, TEA TREE GULLY CC: The important thing from my point of view of wanting to teach these young people was that on the field, no matter how much ability you've got, how much performance you've put in, you still need to have passion for the game and unbridled enthusiasm for playing the game. Chandra typified that.

MIKE SEXTON: Although Chandra was well past his best as a player, he imparted valuable life lessons one his teammates.

ROB ZADOW: The other time is when you come this side of the white line. You don't have to toss bats on the ground to be a superstar. I mean, there's something to be said for being humble, proud and yet still confident. And he was very much that.

MIKE SEXTON: Now in his mid-60s, Chandra's still involved with the sport - in a way. He's using his profile to help his country overcome something far greater than a game of cricket: trying to eliminate polio. Members of the current Indian side, including the Little Master, Sachin Tendulkar, are the faces of a public health campaign to vaccinate all Indian children for polio.

PADDY PHILLIPS, SA CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: It's an illness that mostly is asymptomatic, but in less than one per cent of cases, people get a symptomatic infection which causes diarrhoea, muscle cramps, headache, neck stiffness and can cause the paralysis which is of particular importance because it is a crippling illness.

MIKE SEXTON: After polio vaccines were developed in the late 1950s, mass vaccination programs steadily reduced the number of cases. Australia was declared free of the virus in the year 2000.

PADDY PHILLIPS: Mass vaccination has been the reason why Europe, the Americas, Western Pacific including Australia, have been declared officially polio-free. There is no other reason; that's the reason.

MIKE SEXTON: But the world may never have seen the type of mass vaccination that's taken place in India. In 2009 there were more reported cases of polio here than anywhere on Earth. But with philanthropic support, international health co-ordination and more than a million volunteers, 900 million Indians were vaccinated. And earlier this month, the country marked an astonishing milestone of being 12 months without a new case of polio.

BHAGWAT CHANDRASEKHAR: I was really proud. And I said, yes, I will definitely make it. And I must really, really appreciate the hard work done by everyone involved in this team.

MIKE SEXTON: There are now only three countries - Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan - with polio. And the success on the Subcontinent has created the belief that polio could go the way of smallpox, which was declared beaten worldwide in 1979. After his work promoting the success of the anti-polio campaign, Chandra had time to visit his old club in the Adelaide foothills. He says life has taught him to be both hopeful and practical and it seems these were lessons he was able to pass on.

ROB ZADOW: He didn't perform to what he would've wanted to perform as a player, but I was more than happy with the lessons that were being imparted.

HEATHER EWART: Mike Sexton with that report.