One of the stars of India’s 2001 comeback series victory against Australia, Harbhajan Singh, the off-spinner, always performed well against the arch rivals.
In this Idea Exchange, former cricketer and AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Harbhajan Singh discusses the mental fragility of the visiting Australian team, what India should do to win ICC trophies and why politics minus rancour is the way to go ahead. The session was moderated by Devendra Pandey, Senior Assistant Editor.
If you compare to other Australian teams which toured earlier — we don’t want to go 30-40 years back but even if we go that far — I think this is probably the weakest team. Not in terms of skills, mentally they are very fragile. They are not able to handle pressure the way the Aussies used to. It’ll be fair to say this is not the Aussie-Aussie kind of team that we used to see or play against.
Devendra Pandey: Can you elaborate on what this team lacks?
The Aussies used to have a lot of plans before touring any country. They understood the conditions better than the other teams. That’s the reason they were a bit more successful than others, even in India. This team, particularly, are clueless. They don’t have any plans. In the first game, they were clueless. They knew these conditions would be challenging for any batter — the ball will spin from the first ball. It’s not something that’s started to happen now; it’s been happening for the last eight-10 years. In 2012-13, they lost on similar wickets. They were clueless even at that point in time but they fought better than this. But this team, I don’t see anyone standing up and taking those challenges and trying to do something different than what others are doing. Before the first Test even began, there was so much chaos. They were thinking about what will happen, will the pitches spin. They even got a bowler like R Ashwin at nets. But when you bat at nets and you bat in the middle, those are two different things. So you’ve hyped up among yourselves about how Ashwin and (Ravindran) Jadeja will bowl. So what! No matter how the pitch is, you should know how to manage the game. Know that 200-250 will be a good score… At least try to get that somehow. I couldn’t see any of this planning.
I have spent 20-odd years in cricket and enjoyed every bit of it. Today, whatever I am is because of the game. Even the reason why I was given the MP seat is because I am Harbhajan Singh, the cricketer
Devendra Pandey: What happened in the second Test?
In the second Test, they thought attack is the best option. That’s true when things are under your control. But when you are trying to attack the opposition, you still need to assess the bounce and spin of the pitch; who the bowlers are; what are the scoring options and how often will you attack. But that was not the case. They were trying to play those sweep shots which was not the right option. The ball was staying low. Again, this isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening from the time since the stadium, which is now named after Arun Jaitleyji, was called Kotla. When the ball is keeping low, sweep is the worst option you can apply. Out of the 10 wickets, seven fell to sweep shots and one batsman lost his back stump while trying to hit a reverse sweep. That shows there wasn’t any plan and the one they had wasn’t right. So, if this is the way the Australian team is thinking, this is probably the worst I have seen…