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Bhajji a class act

Until he began sprinting with a near maniacal zeal on taking the final wicket in the Test series, Harbhajan Singh had been patient, very patient. For someone of excitable temperament he had, in fact, been on exemplary behaviour. The torrent of words started much afterwards, which too was predictable.

But, at least in this case, Bhajji could be viewed with a liberal measure of sympathy. The poor bloke was so overwhelmed by criticism over his Nagpur performance that the dam had to burst sometime. The ‘critic in full flow' to the ‘critic being made to eat his words' is a cyclical phenomenon that has been seen often enough in the game.

The players who last will always feel they have put one over their detractor. The very fact that they last is because they are quality players. Bhajji is a class act who measures up pretty well on the canvas on which the best spinners in the country have practiced their art. If not for a minor technical flaw or two, Bhajji would be right up there with the very best like Errapalli Prasanna.

Where Bhajji's Test series changed was in the two sliders that he bowled to get two batsmen out leg before on the opening day of the second Test. This is where the thinking Bhajji of Eden Gardens had done more than the patient Harbhajan of Nagpur. Of course, the fact that there was a great deal more bounce to keep him interested in the second Test helped considerably.

By bowling those sliders, Bhajji had outwitted the same men who had tortured him in the first Test with the technical adaptation of going back and across to play his off-stump attacking line from beyond the line of the stumps. Forcing him thus to switch from his routine breaks into off peg, they played him off the leg stump quite comfortably. The softer Nagpur pitch also offered Bhajji little chance to work his way past them tactically.

It was impressive of Bhajji to have stuck to the basics during the dry run. He has often been the one criticized for trying to bowl yorkers at 100 kmph in order to restrict batsmen, particularly in the limited-overs game. To keep at it as he did in the fashion of the more classical finger spinners was indeed creditable. Success had to come for an accurate spinner prepared to bide his time and stick to the basics.

Life must have been vastly different when Bhajji was bowling in tandem with Anil Kumble when he had all the freedom to experiment. Being the lead spinner has brought a kind of inhibition that may even have led to his patiently sticking to the basics. But it has worked out for him as he is the long distance customer who has a few more miles to travel before his sell-by dates comes up.

A study of the most recent past will show spinners have not been all that successful even on the subcontinent in both innings. They have tended to have a far better strike rate on a wearing pitch, which again is logical. Zaheer Khan has been far more central to India gaining the No. 1 spot in Tests than spinners who succeeded more in the latter half of matches and young seamers like Ishant Sharma who have tended to do well with the new ball.

In many ways, it has been a team effort on the part of India that brought it to the top rather than the one-dimensional spin bowling strengths of the past when designer pitches were routinely produced in the country to make virtually delusional victories, the significance of which used to fade the moment the team stepped out to play overseas. This is a far more balanced Indian team now.

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