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| The Forgotten Man |
It has been a year and the World Cup has been largely remembered by Indians, if not anyone else, for the tears from Sachin Tendulkar, the first ball fours from Virender Sehwag, the six from M S Dhoni sailing over long-on bringing the Would cup home, the 97 from Gautam Gambhir in the final, the accurate bowling of Zaheer Khan and last but not least the tremendous show by Yuvraj Singh with both bat and ball. There are so many things that have gone unnoticed. For example, this World Cup was considered to be a poor tournament for Harbhajan Singh. People , largely think that he was there to provide wickets and he didn't and Yuvraj did his job as well. But, Harbhajan was the guy who was tying up one end which enabled Yuvraj to get wickets at the other end, sometimes even through poor short deliveries. Wickets that come to mind, Kumara Sangakkara in the final and William Porterfield when he was sailing at 74, both could have done some additional damage, but were out to poor short deliveries from Yuvraj. This is not an attempt to belittle Yuvraj's efforts, but an attempt at pointing out that Harbhajan was also doing his job while Yuvraj was getting those wickets.
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| Indian Bowlers' Performace, Word Cup 2011 |
In fact, the statistics clearly show that Harbhajan has the least economy rate even having bowled the maximum number of overs. Considering that he had tied up one end while the others picked up wickets, the number of wickets he has picked are also pretty decent at 9.
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| Harbhajan's Matches in the World Cup |
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| Yuvraj's Matches in the World Cup |
A match-wise comparison of the two suggests that Harbhajan has not only been able to maintain a good economy rate in high scoring matches against England and South Africa, but also has picked up 4 crucial wickets in those matches while Yuvraj had none and conceded far too many. Again, Yuvraj was a star performer. He worked really hard at getting all those wickets and all those runs and hence I would want to stress hard that this is not an attempt to belittle his role, but to stress that Harbhajan, although having done his job decently enough has been the forgotten man. The man who has taken 406 Test wickets and 259 ODI wickets has been forgotten for about 8 months, now. He did need a break from test matches as just tying up one end was not enough for a strike bowler, but just like that his return is also much needed for Indian Cricket.
As Rahul Dravid rightly pointed out, Harbhajan is also one of the few who have to be involved in building India's next generation team. The forgotten man, as does everyone, has a second stint in international cricket, I hope, for it is he who will be able to help spinners like Ashwin and Ojha.
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Thats true. I agree. Well, Its like he was not even remembered during the world cup time itself.
ReplyDeleteI still remember he had taken 3 wickets against SA in the world cup. He was the highest wicket taker in our side.All the talk was about the sachin's century going in vain again. I don remember even any commentator talking about him, except when he came to bat.He is in a intermediate position. Its like All the senior players(sachin , dravid and sehwag) from India are legends. Youngsters are special and energetic.This guy is treated like senior by the youngsters. And as a junior by the senior most people.The talk is all about either senior most or the youngsters.This is the not the case in the Pakistan team.Even though there is a margin, they are not treated like this. All players are same when it comes to match . Ofcourse , yea , i cant deny the fact that pakistan had its own problems between the players.
I didn't understand why the talk about Pakistan came into the picture. The rest are all true. He should make a comeback. 400 wickets now and he is 32 or 33 now. He can play for at least another 4 years.
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