Former ICC elite umpire Darrell Hair’s claims that Muttiah Muralitharan, Harbhajan Singh, Saqlain Mushtaq have helped spawn “a generation of chuckers” has been met with a typically outspoken response from Harbhajan.
An in interview with the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week, Hair had stated: “I said it in the late ’90s that if something wasn’t done about it you’d have a generation of chuckers on your hands and now you have. They try to emulate Harbajan Singh and Saqlain Mushtaq and Murali and that’s the problem. The crackdown should have happened on those players and the ICC should have let it be known that it wasn’t acceptable.”
Harbhajan’s reply, true to his fiery nature as a cricketer, was swift and forthright. “This is too much. We didn’t cross the limit but now Hair is “crossing the limit””, Harbhajan was quoted as saying by Mumbai-based tabloid Mid-Day. “Unka dimag theekane nahin (He seems to have gone mad).”
“We were always within the permissible limit. Me and Muralitharan were cleared by the ICC more than once and why didn’t Hair object to my bowling thereafter? Was it because he was feared of losing his job as an ICC umpire? We are not sons-in-law of the ICC.”
Twice during his international career he had his action tested and cleared – in 1999 in England and 2005 in Australia. In 1998, at the age of 18, Harbhajan went to London and receive a clearance from the ICC’s spin consultant Fred Titmus, the former England slow bowler. In December 2004, he had been reported by match referee Chris Broad in Chittagong because of doubts over the legality of his doosra. Subsequently, Harbhajan’s action was then cleared after he underwent tests at the University of Western Australia in Perth, only for Broad to file a second report after India played Pakistan at Kolkata the following month. He was again cleared by the ICC.
“The present day bowlers are trying to bowl [the] doosra, which was invented by us. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are bending arms more than the limit. The doosras can be bowled without bending the arms too much,” said Harbhajan. “The ICC has set a standard for his bowlers and using the latest technology. Hair should stop challenging the technology and better keep his mouth shut.”
Harbhajan, 35, is India’s most successful offspinner in Tests and ODIs with 413 and 259 wickets respectively, and overall he is the tenth-highest wicket-taker in Test history.
The ICC has come down heavily on illegal bowling since June 2014. Saeed Ajmal, Sachithra Senanayake, Prosper Utseya, Kane Williamson and the Bangladesh pair of Sohag Gazi and Al-Amin Hossain have been banned from bowling in internationals, while in the recent Champions League Twenty20 five others were reported for suspect actions – Sunil Narine, Mohammad Hafeez, Adnan Rasool, Suryakumar Yadav and Prenelan Subrayen. Following the second instance of his being reported, which resulted in his missing the CLT20 final for Kolkata Knight Riders, Narine was pulled from the West Indies’ ongoing tour of India.
