Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket PlayersHarbhajan on making Ricky Ponting his bunny: 'His defense wasn't the greatest. My bounce was something he couldn't play'
Like every great batter, Ricky Ponting too had a kryptonite, which goes by the name of Harbhajan Singh.
The great Ricky Ponting to date remains one of the most dominating batters to grace world cricket. Ponting's brute of a pull shot and success against pacers and spinners alike in any format and any condition is probably what makes him one of the best batters to have ever placed. Ponting had an overall Test batting average of 51.85, which spiked to 55.41 against spinners. But like every great batter, Ponting too had a kryptonite, which goes by the name of Harbhajan Singh. The former India off-spinner had Ponting's number, and dismissed him 10 times, more than anyone else in Test cricket. (Also Read: 'Best ever in a match-saving cause': PCB chairman Ramiz Raja on Pakistan's 2nd Test heroics: 'Whole world was watching')
The saga between Harbhajan and Ponting began during a 1998 ODI between India and Australia in Sharjah, when the then-17-year-old off-spinner had Ponting out stumped and followed it up with a send-off. From there, until the end of both their careers, Harbhajan had the wood over Ponting.
"There is no doubt about how great or big a player he was, and whenever he played the game, he wanted to dominate. But what I found as a bowler – it could be just me talking about it or what I felt – bowling against Pointing was that he had very hard hands against defending the ball," Harbhajan told Brett Lee on the former Australia quick's podcast.
"So that's what made him vulnerable. His defence was not the greatest. He used to defend with very hard hands. So that's what made his vulnerable. My bounce was something he could not play as well as the other bowlers."
Harbhajan's most memorable dismissal of Ponting is perhaps during the 2001 Eden Gardens Test match. He sent Ponting packing for a duck, the first of the three victims of his hat-trick. Against Harbhajan, Ponting's average slipped to 22.30 and fittingly, the former Australia captain was Harbhajan's 300th Test wicket as well. They have been through a lot of turmoil as rivals – including the 2008 Sydney Test 'Monkeygate' incident but things got better when the two shared the dressing room together at Mumbai Indians.
"Maybe I am lucky that I was able to get him out 11-12 times in Test cricket. But yes, it doesn't make him a lesser player. He is still a top player and if I have to pick my top five guys who dominated world cricket in terms of batting, I would definitely have Ricky Ponting in that list," added Harbhajan.
