Harbhajan Singh reveals the reason why Australia stopped sledging

Indian off-spinner, Harbhajan Singh is considered to be one of the greatest offspinners spinners who had ever played this game. Harbhajan loved bowling against the Australians and enjoyed immense success against the toughest opponent right through his career.

He opened up on many things in a chat show. Bhajji explained about an incident that happened in a Test against Australia in Bangalore and said that thereafter Aussies stopped sledging him.

Harbhajan was batting and Darren Lehman tried to distract him. he poked a funny question, “Are you pregnant?” There were laughs at first but later the batsman went slightly overboard and asked him which month? This caused an upset in Lehman’s mind and he stopped to bother Harbhajan. Later on, it was Glenn McGrath who tried something similar and the turbanator responded with a 7-wicket haul in the next inning.

And next day after this, McGrath said, “The more you talk to him, he seems to be getting better. So we are going to leave him alone, so let’s see then what happens.”

Despite Australia being the top side of the generation, they were one of the favorite oppositions for Harbhajan, having the better of them most of the times. In 2001, in the 3rd Test of the series against Australia at Kolkata, Harbhajan became the first off-spinner to pick a hat-trick in Test cricket against Australia.

The ‘Monkeygate’ controversy involving Andrew Symonds was one of the dirtiest controversies in the history of the game. It was in the 2008 Sydney Test match, Harbhajan had an exchange with Symonds on day 3 of the Test, during which he allegedly called Symonds a “monkey”. He was handed a three-match ban, which was later overturned on appeal.