Adam Gilchrist said Harbhajan was the toughest bowler he had faced in his career. Speaking on the occasion of celebrating his 20th Test debut anniversary, the former Australian wicket-keeper-batsman Adam
Gilchrist said he had the toughest times of his life against Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh. He also spoke about the “unplayable podcast”
Gilchrist recollected the famous 2001 Test series in between India and Australia which is regarded as one of the greatest test series of all time. Gilchrist scored a remarkable century in the first Test at Mumbai under the captaincy of Steve Waugh.
He said, “We were five for 99, I went in there, got a hundred runs off 80 balls, we won in three days and I just thought, What have these blokes been doing for 30 years. How easy is this? And how wrong I was. We have only to fast-forward to the next Test match and I came back to reality.”
‘Harbhajan bamboozled us’ – Adam Gilchrist
The Left-handed batsmen admitted that Muralitharan and Harbhajan Singh were the only toughest bowlers he had faced in his entire career.
Gilchrist added “As it would turn out, by the end of that series we probably needed to learn how to put a handbrake on just to get a holding pattern, rather than ”attack, because it doesn’t always work – Harbhajan bamboozled us. He was a bit of a nemesis for me right throughout my career. I found him and Muralitharan probably the two hardest bowlers to face.”
The 47-year-old cricketer also said “We changed our tactics a great deal. In 2001 what we learned was we can’t just attack our way out of every situation. We had to learn to swallow our ego and go defensive, and that was very much part of the whole collective mindset of the group; (for example) the bowlers had to take a step back and a run-in with the new ball with one slip and a sweeper on the leg side.”
