Player record: Harbhajan Singh
■ Making his debut in early 1998, Harbhajan Singh is one of the best and highly passionate off-spinners on the Indian bowling side.
■ Harbhajan was a quality spinner from the beginning of his career, his splendid wicket-taking in domestic cricket took him to the international form of the game where he was appointed as the second spinner.
■ He has played 2 ICC world cups up till now and has been showing great magic with the bowl throughout his career.
■ In 229 One-day international matches, he bowled 12,059 balls taking 259 wickets. His best figures in ODI are 5/31. He has taken 3 five-wicket hauls with a handsome bowling average of 32.84 and has taken 10 wickets more than 5 times in a test match.
■ He has played 101 test matches taking 431 wickets in his career so far.
■ His batting performance is also not very bad. Harbhajan has scored 1190 runs with 49 being his highest in an innings in ODI cricket. He has played numerous match-winning strokes, with important boundaries at crucial stages of the game. As for his test batting record, he has scored 2 centuries and 9 fifties.
Highlights of player record:
■ He has the second-highest number of wickets in test cricket being an off-spinner after the legendary Muralitharan.
■ Harbhajan also became the first Indian spinner to score a hat-trick in test cricket.
■ It is now said that with spinners like Harbhajan in the side, the Indian cricket team can easily put any team in trouble. However, the statement falls true when it comes to Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi but when it comes to bowling second, his bowling certainly gives the Indian side an upper edge.
Currently, Harbhajan Singh is having difficulty in his performance and he has been dropped from many series especially in 2013 and 2014. However, he is expected to make a comeback and there are no chances of him retiring from cricket anymore. India still has faith in him. We hope he delivers.
