After announcing his retirement from all formats of cricket on Friday, Harbhajan Singh has once again hogged the limelight. The off-spinner recently opened up on one of the most unfortunate episodes from his career, the ‘Monkeygate’ scandal during the Sydney Test of 2007/08 against Australia.
Harbhajan feels that the whole incident was ‘uncalled for’ and also spoke at length about how the whole fiasco affected him at that point in his career. He also hinted about revealing further information on the fiasco in his upcoming autobiography.
For the unversed, the ‘Monkeygate’ scandal refers to an altercation between Harbhajan Singh and Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds. The duo was involved in a heated exchange and the matters got worse as Australian skipper Ricky Ponting complained to the on-field umpires about the same, revealing that Harbhajan had racially insulted Symonds. Later, the pair of them had to undergo a court trial due to this mishap.
Shedding further light on the episode, Harbhajan told PTI, “It was something that was uncalled for. Whatever happened during that day in Sydney shouldn’t have happened and also what it led to. It was really unnecessary. But forget about who said what. You and I both know the truth has two sides.”
The ‘Turbanator’ further added, “No one cared about my side of the truth in the whole episode. No one cared what I went through in those few weeks and how I was mentally sinking. I have never extensively given my side of the story but people will know about it in my upcoming autobiography. What I went through shouldn’t have happened to anyone.”
Undoubtedly, for a player of his level, going through such a big controversy might have affected Harbhajan a lot. He would however go on to recover from the incident and went on to establish his legacy as one of the all-time greats in Indian cricket history.
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