Former India off-spinner Harbhajan Singh is getting trolled and criticized for his recent tweet, which many fans believe was a dig on Ravichandran Ashwin.
In the past few years, Harbhajan Singh has come across as “salty” and “jealous” of the success of R Ashwin, who first took Harbhajan’s place in the team across formats, and later on surpassed the former off-spinner’s Test wickets tally of 419 wickets.
Ashwin currently sits with 449 Test wickets – among Indians, only behind Anil Kumble’s record of 619 wickets. Ashwin has taken his wickets at an average of 24, much better average than the 32 of Harbhajan.
Harbhajan Singh, though, has regularly pointed out that the pitches in India in the past few years have been extremely spin-friendly, something which, Bhajji claims, wasn’t the case in his and Anil Kumble’s era.
This is a debatable topic, and for another day.
Harbhajan Singh came in the firing line of the fans for his cryptic dig as R Ashwin
Ahead of the upcoming 4-Test series between India and Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the visitors, who are practicing in Bangalore, called up an ‘Ashwin doppelganger’ – Maheesh Pithiya, the Baroda spinner who has a similar action to Ashwin – in order to prepare to face the off-spinner, who has tormented the Aussie batters on their previous two tours to India.
This became a talking point this week. Former India batsman Wasim Jaffer made a joke about this, saying that Ashwin is already in the heads of the Australians.
To this tweet of Jaffer, Harbhajan Singh posted a picture of a dry pitch with cracks in it, tacitly saying that it is not Ashwin, but the excessively spin-friendly pitch that is in the minds of the Australians.
Fans slammed Harbhajan Singh, calling him “insecure” and “jealous”, and other hilarious names:
India and Australia will contest in a 4-Test series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, starting February 9 in Nagpur. The second Test will be played in Delhi, followed by the third Test in Dharamsala before the series concludes in Ahmedabad.
India and Australia Squads for Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023:
Australia Test squad for the tour of India: Pat Cummins (c), Ashton Agar, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Peter Handscomb, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Lance Morris, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (VC), Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner.
India Squad for the first two matches: Rohit Sharma (C), KL Rahul (VC), Shubman Gill, C Pujara, V Kohli, S Iyer, KS Bharat (wk), Ishan Kishan (wk), R Ashwin, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohd. Shami, Mohd. Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Suryakumar Yadav.
