Can Harbhajan do a Kumble?

Harbhajan Singh has a bit of a split personality – he’s either very good or he’s just very bad. There is no middle ground with him. But when he is feeling good about himself and his bowling, he can carry the team to great heights with him. On the reverse, when he is not in form, he can drag the team down and make a sullen face while doing it. When Harbhajan ended his four over spell against England last night, almost every member of the team came around and gave him a pat on the back. His figures 4 for 12 were a Twenty20 record for India – but that wasn’t the only reason why the team gathered around him. It was the off-spinner’s international comeback after being out of the side for well over a year. And to see him smile again was pretty special. As things stand, he may still not be able to break into the playing XI – India was in a whole scale experimentation mode against England, and this is but the start of a long journey back. And in that sense, he must take a leaf out of Anil Kumble’s page. [caption id=“attachment_465725” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The off spinner after taking a wicket yesterday. PTI[/caption] In January 2001, Anil Kumble’s shoulder went under the surgeon’s scalpel. The surgery was successful, but it was hard to say when the leg-spinner would play international cricket again. His arm was in a brace for five weeks, and for three months he could not even raise his bowling arm. And while Kumble was out of the game, Harbhajan was forging a reputation of his own. He was no longer the sidekick. Sourav Ganguly’s confidence in the off-spinner was growing – so much so that he even picked Bhajji ahead of Kumble on a few international tours. For Kumble, it was a bitter pill to swallow. So he did what only true great players do – he went back to the drawing board. The main criticism people had about Kumble’s bowling, was that he just didn’t turn the ball. So he developed a googly – which was crude looking, but very effective. He quickly realised that reinvention was the key. The effects were seen on the 2003-04 tour of Australia where despite not playing the first Test, he still picked up 24 wickets. A huge majority of those wickets were thanks to the googly – it made Kumble more than just an accurate bowler, it made him a spinner and it kept him in the game. “The googly was spinning more than my leg breaks. I developed it in the second-half of my career. Then I tried the flipper and the carom ball and variations in the grip itself,” Kumble once told the Economic Times . “Even if batsmen know I’m bowling a googly, you still have to play it. You bowl in good areas and have the field set for it and still get people out. So even if I had to bowl six googlies at one batsman, I would still do it. It’s about analysing not just your game, but also the conditions under which the batsman goes about constructing his inning. Generally, all batsmen construct their inning in a very similar fashion. So you need to construct your bowling accordingly," he said. If you want to be consistently successful in international cricket, you have got to vary and try new things. Harbhajan, for a while now, has been stuck in rut. He wasn’t bowling the doosra and the regular off-spinner much. He was relying too much on the top spinner and the quicker one to get him wicket. It made him predictable to the point of being ineffective. In 2010, in 12 Tests, he claimed 43 wickets at an average of 40.69. The strike-rate was an abysmal 85.3. In 2011, before he was dropped, it was more of the same. He took 20 wickets at 38.05 with a strike-rate of 77.9. Harbhajan might argue that he has his own style of getting wickets. But he needs something to surprise the batsmen again, something to put some doubt in their minds. And we haven’t seen that yet. Maybe using the bowling crease to vary his line and change the angle, like Saeed Ajmal, is the answer. But then again, maybe not. This is a problem that Bhajji needs to solve on his own. Just going back to the basics isn’t the answer now – certainly not when the competition isn’t putting a foot wrong. Yes, he was good last night – he didn’t bowl too many short balls, and pitched the ball up. The England batsmen did the rest. Even Dhoni felt that it was one of his better bowling performances. “I think I have seen Bhajji bowl better. But this performance… if you rate the circumstances, you know coming back after a period of time… getting a chance were he has to prove himself. There was a certain amount of pressure… maybe his own expectations but that added a touch of desperation to his game,” said Dhoni after the match. “It was important that he did well in this game and by that I don’t mean he has to take 4-5 wickets in a game. Even if he had taken 2 wickets and given 24 runs in his 4 overs, I would have rated it highly. I think he is someone who can do better than this but if you go by the circumstances, I think it was a brilliant performance by him.” But it cannot stop here. Aggression, quicker ones and the odd top-spinner can only carry him so far. To go further, India needs a new Harbhajan to emerge. Can he do it? More importantly, can he do it in time?