For Harbhajan, life has been a spinning wicket

For Harbhajan, life has been a spinning wicket
VIKRANT GUPTA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 21: I first saw Harbhajan at Chandigarh's Sector 16 Stadium, a thin, nervous, teenage sardar who spent his evenings sitting on the stairs, by the railings and in the Pace Academy Hostel, dreaming his dream. There was something about the boy...his coaches were unhappy with his flappy bowling action, some doubted his ability to take on physical pressures but everyone knew he was Special.

Sometimes, in local club matches, he would bowl to us, the seam spinning like the earth on its axis. If you hit him, he would give the next ball more flight; when the ball hit the seam, he had his turn and bounce. He never changed his style even for our very short-duration games, where there were only 25/30-odd overs a side; he bowled only to take wickets and not look at containment. Maybe training with budding fast bowlers at the Pace Academy rubbed off on him.

In our small way, we would try to make his two-year stint in Chandigarh comfortable, aware the boy had strong emotional attachments to his large family back home. But we probably needn't have worried. Cricket was his life; mornings, afternoons and evenings, Harbhajan wanted nothing else, the game alone kept him going.

Very soon, he was playing age-grade tournaments for Punjab. There, he was virtually unplayable, picking up more wickets than he was able to score runs. Word spread fast: Here was a prodigy in the making. It was while playing in the Buchi Babu (Chennai) and Moin-ud-Dowla (Hyderabad) tournaments that Harbhajan came across Anil Kumble, India's spin king of the 90s. Kumble was amazed at Harbhajan's maturity and informed his Indian teammate, Navjot Sidhu, about ``this sardar from your state who must be taken care of''.

That was round about the time the 1997 domestic season was starting. Sidhu hadn't yet done his homework on Harbhajan when he received a call from Balwinder Sandhu, former Indian speedster and then coach of Mumbai. ``Sherry, I've heard of Harbhajan and we in Mumbai are interested in his playing Ranji Trophy for us. Can you spare him?'' Sandhu's intentions were clear: With Ashish Kapoor bowling offspin for Punjab, Harbhajan's path was blocked, he reckoned.

Sidhu, though, probably thought he was being sarcastic and played Harbhajan in Punjab's very first game of the season. The rise was amazing; within months, in March 1998, Harbhajan was playing against Mark Taylor's Australians in the Bangalore Test.

Life couldn't have been any better.

But fate has a funny way of evening things out. Soon, Harbhajan was being reported for chucking. His world turned upside down, he lost his place in the side, his form dipped, his confidence went out of the window. The critics started questioning his attitude and aptitude.

For a teenager from a humble small-town family, the rapid shift from triumph to disaster with all its attendant sub-texts was too much to handle. He simply lost the plot. As he later confessed, it took him a while to wake up to the world slipping beneath his feet. He first got himself entangled in a confrontation with a national selector and then was unceremoniuosly chucked out of the National Cricket Academy. He was a shattered man.

I met him again in Amritsar last year during a Ranji match. He'd just lost his father; this tragedy, ironically, seemed to have had a positive effect on him. He seemed more mature. He said he had learnt a lot and was looking for that one chance to prove himself. The Indian team for the Zimbabwe series was to be announced that evening and, going by his improved bowling, I casually remarked to Punjab coach Bhupinder Singh (Sr) that his team would miss an offspinner for the next Ranji tie.

A Punjab offspinner did make it to the Indian team. But it was Sarandeep, not Harbhajan. And while the Punjab dressing room was celebrating a teammate's entry to the big league, Harbhajan stood still. He congratulated Sarandeep and slipped out of the ground. When I called him on his cell phone, he was sobbing. He said he had lost it all.

In the space of two amazing weeks, he's won it back.

Loser? Think again
The hardest part of Harbhajan Singh's life so far was being dropped from the Indian Test side after being reported for chucking. It's probably the most humiliating and morale-sapping experience any bowler can undergo. Today, his successful comeback may amaze the public, yet it comes as no surprise to those who saw him in those difficult times. He was preparing all the while for success.

Vipin Yeeshu, a close friend and teammate in several under-16 and under-19 sides, says Harbhajan never gave up hope of returning to Test cricket andpractised daily with this in mind. ``We used to go to Burton Park, the international cricket stadium in Jalandhar, at 5:00 a.m.; we'd run for two hours and have bowling practice for another two hours. Harbhajan would return at noon and countinue practising till 5:00 pm. Then, we thought he was overdoing it; today, I understand why.''

Surinder Sharma (Bauna), another member of those practice sessions, points out that even while serving the ban, Harbhajan was the second-highest wicket-taker in the northern region in the Ranji Trophy 2000. And in 1999 he took 27 wickets in Ranji matches. Not the sign of a loser.

-- Anju Agnihotri