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SPORTS: CRICKET
Stealth
Bomber
Harbhajan Singh begins his second innings in international
cricket by destroying the wizards of Oz
By Sharda Ugra
When he begins his
run-up to the crease, Harbhajan Singh swings out his arms like a seagull
ready to take wing. But there is to be no coasting on the back of warm
air currents, no lazy aimless circling around in the stratosphere. It
may look like a seagull, it may sometimes even act like a seagull-floating
into delivery stride like a slender white bird touching down on a lawn-but
to the Australian batting line-up, the bowling of Harbhajan Singh has
contained all the menace and the mayhem of a Stealth bomber.
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| STING
OPERATOR: Singh exults after acquiring another wicket |
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Thirty-two wickets in a series, the first test
hat-trick ever for India, the crush of dozens of bearhugs, a captain screaming,
"I TOLD you, I TOLD you!" like a deranged dervish, the neverending
demands of the crowd and the world's No. 1 cricket team being pushed like
it never has in the past 18 months... all this because of the spinning
fingers of a cricketer first thrown to the wolves of international cricket
over his action and then thrown out of the country's National Cricket
Academy (NCA) for "indiscipline".
In a contest which involved names and reputations
as luminous as that of Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, the bowler of the
series has been a slim 20-year-old Sikh with the manner of a frisky street
pup. Not only did this one bark, as the Aussies discovered, he had quite
a ferocious bite too. He has a six-year-old's mischief in his eyes but
accepts all the compliments with the quietest of smiles and the oddest
kind of calm, attributing his success in the series to a higher power
than the magic in his fingers and the strength of his mind: "Baba
ne wicket dila diya. Maine sirf unhe le liya. (God gave me the wicket,
I only accepted it)."
Yet this is not the typical talk of the Indian
sportsman, known, more often than not, to throw up his hands and accept
the dictates of destiny. Friends say that professional adversity and personal
tragedy have made Harbhajan a more contemplative individual and cricketer
who has spent weeks polishing his skills, getting ready for the Australians.
Harbhajan's bagful of wickets-the most by an Indian bowler in a test series,
overtaking the legendary Bishan Singh Bedi-have come on wickets that have
not turned square, but have instead demanded accuracy and hard work.
He had the Australians foxed. Mark Waugh, whom
the Indians consider the best player of spin among the Aussies, said that
by the time he had figured out how to play the off-spinner, the series
was over! Ricky Ponting, Harbhajan's own special bunny (he got him five
times out of five) ran across him in Kolkata and said, "Well bowled
mate, but please don't hit my pads again."
There was, like there has been with every aspect
of Harbhajan's life, a story behind his success. At the Indian team's
intensive conditioning camp in the city before the series, Harbhajan ran
into a man who has changed the course of many test matches for India and
another, who is trying to change the haphazard path usually taken by its
team. Injured leg spinner Anil Kumble and India coach John Wright worked
with Harbhajan, Wright stressing the importance of bowling a metronomic
line to the batsman to work on his mind, and Kumble, drawing a square
on the practice wicket and making Harbhajan land the ball on the spot
over and over again. Kumble, his arm in a sling, would stand watching,
as the boy they call Bhajji bowled at one stump for three straight hours.
Says Harbhajan: "It gave me greater control and has taught me that
you have to dismiss a batsman in the mind, make it difficult for him to
get runs off you, so he will have to try to do something silly. Now I'm
truly ready to be patient."
Harbhajan has hardly ever had to wait in his
career: the only son in a family of six with two unmarried elder sisters,
he began playing cricket at 13 and was egged on by his maternal uncle
Kartar Singh, a badminton coach and the district sports officer. "He
then began practising alone for hours together on the roof of his house,"
says Singh. In school at Jalandhar, Harbhajan foxed everyone with his
spin bowling and was selected for training at the Pace Academy in Patiala.
In quick succession he was chosen for the Punjab
under-16s and then for the Ranji Trophy team before making his debut for
India in the series against Australia in 1998. Harbhajan didn't really
realise how high he had come until the slope suddenly turned slippery
under his feet. A group of three International Cricket Council (ICC) match
referees-Peter van der Merwe of South Africa, Talat Ali of Pakistan and
Ranjan Madugalle of Sri Lanka reported him to the ICC for illegal action-a
law still ambiguous and of- ten debated. In November 1998, he was dispatched
to the world body's spin doctor, Fred Titmus in England, who worked with
him for four hours and declared him fit to bowl again in international
cricket.
In the months following his return, Harbhajan
went through hell. His confidence was so undermined that while bowling
in the nets, he would ask 10-year-olds whether everything looked fine
with him. "It was a very difficult time in my life but I have plenty
of friends who believed in me and helped me through," he says. Then,
last summer, came the removal from the NCA, when, among other things,
he tore up a diet chart, furious, like every good Punjabi boy would no
doubt be, that there was no ghee on his rotis. He does not talk about
that episode anymore and neither do those who condemned him to a life
on the outskirts of the Indian game.
Last year, Harbhajan
found himself the man of the house following the sudden death of his father,
Sardev Singh, due to hepatitis. The choice came down to either running
the wall-clock manufacturing unit, the family transport business, or returning
to the one place which felt most like home and office: the middle of a
cricket ground.
The return home has toughened Harbhajan and
old-timers are impressed with what they see: legendary offspiner E.A.S.
Prasanna was delighted at how Harbhajan was able to bowl a steady line
to the Australians, and his contemporary, S. Venkataraghavan believes
he has the variety to succeed at the international level, but must keep
working. Bedi reminded people that there would be days when he would bowl
well but not get wickets. Ganguly says, "People forget he's just
a 20-year-old-he's a tough character but he's still young."
Wright, who doesn't count chickens unless he
first sweeps up the eggshells and puts out the garbage, complimented his
spinner on his discipline and threw open the doors, saying, "Harbhajan
has the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the great Indian spinners."
After the historic win in Chennai, Harbhajan's
most regular bowling partner, Sachin Tendulkar, delighted with the manner
and the speed with which the Punjab bowler had got to 50 test wickets,
wanted to give his younger teammate a gift and asked him what he wanted.
He had to insist several times before Harbhajan asked for a pair of spikes.
Of course, he would need a new set: he'd driven
his own through Australian hearts.
-with Ramesh Vinayak in Chandigarh
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