Lot of people wonder how Bhajji had achieved 400 test wickets since they think Bhajji is a mediocre bowler. But for few cricket fans like me , Bhajji always looks like a great spinner of his era and of course that is true to greater extent. Statistics might not reflect exactly what he was and many people keep criticising him for the stats showing his strike rate of 67 and average of 31. This is the lowest among all those who had reached 400 test scalps but it is not dependent on Bhajji alone. Bhajji belonged to an era where these figures are pretty normal for a spinner.
Bhajji,hailing from small Indian city,Jallandhar from Punjab, with no cricketing background entered into the national squad at a very young age of 18 during the 1998 Australian tour of India as a back up spinner to Anil Kumble ( who is the best ever Indian spinner till date). He possessed all the abilities to become the lead Indian spinner in future and did so. India , being the home of spinners had produced many and few names that I remember are Vinoo Mankand, Subash Gupte, Chandra,Venkat,Prasanna, Bedi, Maninder, Raju,Chauhan, Siva, Ravi Shastri, Nilesh Kulkarni, Sarandeep Singh, Mishra,Ohja, Hirwani,Sanghvi,Bahutule ( Who still holds the world record for best figures in Test Debut). And how many names had lasted for more than 25 tests or 100 scalps? Very few and only 2 had lasted for more than 400 scalps( Anil & Bhajji).
The Career of Bhajji :
Bhajji debuted against the mighty Aussies in the 3rd test of 1998 Aussies tour of India at Bangalore and had 2 scalps under the shadow of Anil. Till the 2000-01 Australian tour of India, Bhajji had a mediocre test figures with 22 scalps in 8 games. The Australian series gave him the best break through of his career. He shouldered the responsiblity of the Indian spin attack in the absence of Anil. The first test in which India lost by 10 wickets he took 4 wickets and showed few signs of an attacking spinner. Then came the match at Eden Gardens, the best ever Indian test victory till date as rated by many Indian cricketers and fans. He took the first ever Hat-trick by an Indian bowler in tests( later Irfan joined the list with a couple of hat-tricks). He ended with 7 for 133 in 1st innings and Aussies posted 445. Indians got bowled out for 171 and they had 274 run defecit. The Indians are asked to follow on by Steve Waugh and dreamt for 17th Successive win and a test series victory in India. Laxman and Dravid denied thier chances and Bhajji with Sachin’s part time partnership breakers gave India a victory, Bhajji took 13 scalps in the match. In the series decider at Chennai,Bhajji took 15 scalps and guided India to victory. 32 wickets in 3 matches turned the career of Bhajji.
After this series , till 2009, Bhajji was under the shadow of Anil as second attacking Indian spinner and both shared wickets. If these 2 had played seperately for India, unlike Warne and Murali, Anil would have got a 100 scalps more atleast or else Bhajji would have got 500 scalps by now. This makes the difference too.
Another factor to be told of is the way of change in batting scenario the test matches had got in the past 5-6 years, the scoring rate got more than 4 runs per over in most of the matches and the wickets are mostly batsmen friendly. And every team got the best attacking play-plot against all spinners. Warne,Murali and Anil had played most of thier part when most of the teams failed against spin attack whereas Bhajji, being the un-lucky had to face attacking batsmen against spin in most part of his career. All the matches played in India and the sub-continent had flat tracks and the batsman are well prepared to play against what ever the kind of bowling might be. In such cases, the bowlers need to bowl long spells to get wickets and that eventually increases their average as well as strike rate. I dont understand why people criticise the bowler alone for such playing conditions.
People always compare with other leading spinners of the past and fail to recognize the conditions and the scenario they had played in the past. Murali had got more than 60% of his wickets at home at average of 18.( around 500 of his 800 wickets), and 400 of his wickets came against the weakest batting line up against spin( Bangla,Zim,WI, Eng,NZ). Against India both Warne and Murali average 43 & 33 respectively. If they are only the best spinners why this difference of more than 10 runs per wicket against a batting line up which plays spin effectively??? Criticisers of Bhajji have no answer to this.
What ever people might say, playing close to 100 matches in 14 years for India itself is an achivement and getting 400 wickets is not an easy thing. With around 8 years of cricket left in Bhajji , he still got more chances to come close to 800 wicket mark of Bhajji as Muralitharan told only Bhajji has ability to break his 800 mark. And remember ,Bhajji was instrumental in making India the No 1 ranked Test Team which both Warne and Murali failed to do so. Its not a simple thing to do.
All the best for Bhajji to earn more and more scalps and break more records.
Suku
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