Team Management is Being Unfair to Harbhajan: Saqlain Mushtaq

Retired Pak off spinner Saqlain Mustaq questions Indian team management’s treatment to Harbhajan.

Saqlain Mustaq playing for Surrey in English county cricket. (Photo Courtesy: Cricinfo)

Practitioners of the same art do have fellow feelings and no wonder pioneer of ‘doosra’, Saqlain Mushtaq feels sad about the manner in which the senior Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh has been sidelined by the team management.

While he terms Ravichandran Ashwin as a “world class bowler”, he feels that Harbhajan not getting a single start during the last seven T20 internationals is “not doing the bowler’s confidence any good”.

I am afraid that Indian cricket board and team management’s treatment to Harbhajan has not been great. He was a world class bowler and is still a world class bowler. The emergence of Ashwin doesn’t mean that you drop Harbhajan or put him under tremendous pressure.

<b>Saqlain Mushtaq, Retired cricketer, Pakistan</b>

The 39-year-old Saqlain added dropping a top grade performer according to convenience is not the best example to set.

Look from the time he got dropped (in 2011), he has made three comebacks which meant that when you needed him, you picked him and when the need was over, you dumped him. When his graph was going down, one should have given him a short break and brought him back. He should have been the first choice spinner supported by Ashwin. Instead you put self doubts in him and now made him the third or fourth choice spinner in the side.

<b>Saqlain Mushtaq, Retired cricketer, Pakistan</b>

Saqlain insisted that when a player is making comeback, he is shaky and one needs to give him the confidence that he would be back to his best.