‘Would have taken 500 wickets’: After announcing retirement, Harbhajan Singh says THIS about selectors

Harbhajan Singh announced his retirement from all formats of cricket on Friday. Undoubtedly, he’s left a legacy few can claim to better, but his case has been a curious one. The ‘Turbanator’ as he called by his fans, retired from cricket 5 years after playing his last game for India. It was a T20 international in 2016, and the off-spinner himself admitted he deserved a better sending off. 

The Jalandhar born cricketer recently sat down for a chat with Dainik Jagran, wherein he revealed how he had the backing of former skipper Sourav Ganguly in his early years. While he might not have needed any support in the 2000s, Harbhajan admitted he could have used some support from the selectors after 2012. 

Having won the ICC ODI World Cup with India, Harbhajan’s career graph started to tumble, and he revealed that if he had got some support around that phase of his career, then he could’ve retired with more than 500 Test wickets in the bag. 

“As long as there is support, it feels great. I would say that if the support had come at the right time, I would have taken 500-550 wickets long ago, because when I was 31 years old I had taken 400 wickets and if I had played for three-four more years I would have taken 500-550 wickets,” said the 41-year-old. 

“But, all that did not happen. There are so many reasons for that, if we go into that, we will dig up a lot of things, which I don’t want to do,” he stated further. 

When Harbhajan started to have a topsy-turvy career, and he was dropped from the team, the off-spinner tried to get in touch with the selectors, to get a perspective on why it was happening, albeit he wasn’t entertained. 

“400 wickets are not obtained by bowling poorly. When someone takes 400 wickets, after that he does not get a chance to play and is not even told why he has been dropped. So many big questions were there in my mind, which no one answered. I tried to get in touch with many people, from the selectors to everyone, but then no one told me why I was dropped,” said Harbhajan in his chat with the Hindi daily. 

While it surely was a hard time for ‘Bhajji’ back then, things appear far better now, as Harbhajan has opportunities to step into politics, while he can also choose to pursue a career in coaching now.