MUMBAI: It was a balmy Friday in Mumbai, and the CK Nayudu Hall at the Brabourne Stadium got warmer with emotion as members of the Legends Club congregated to celebrate Sachin Tendulkar’s 53rd birthday. Nuanced conversations followed, anecdotes were narrated, generous dips into nostalgia pools were taken, and sharp views on where the game is headed were offered.At the centre of this conversation sat off-spin great Harbhajan Singh, India’s 103-Test veteran and owner of 417 Test scalps. He’s also a World Cup winner in 2007 and 2011, an IPL stalwart, a politician, a broadcaster, a YouTuber, and, at heart, an unapologetic lover of Test cricket and true pitches.As Legends Club president and former India player Yajurvindra Singh welcomed Harbhajan and MCA president Ajinkya Naik, he also asked the spinner to address how cricket has changed from the days when a 60-over match was approached like a mini-Test. Harbhajan, after all, represented a very different era, almost an unforgiving one for the bowlers. He arrived when cricket was already changing. One-day cricket had sunk its teeth into the calendar, T20 was an idea waiting to explode and short boundaries and big bats meant long faces for spinners who were being asked to be defensive rather than threatening.
Bhajji, though, was also someone who had graduated through the rigours of Test cricket.“Test cricket tests you in every possible way,” Harbhajan said. “Playing 100 Tests was the biggest achievement of my career,” he added and stressed that playing 100 Tests became his goal when he saw Kapil Dev get to the mark, but doubted whether too many people would achieve that in the modern era.Heads nodded in agreement, though the discussion inevitably turned to modern cricket’s obsession with shorter formats, six-hitting and money-spinning leagues.So, where does Test cricket stand today?Harbhajan’s answer was firm. “Save Test cricket by playing more Test cricket,” he said, and added, “And by preparing better pitches. Matches should last five days, not finish in two-and-a-half. If we see Ashes, the top series, the games last five days. When India plays Australia, why should Tests end in two and a half days? We had an India-England Test where we saw Joe Root take five wickets in five overs. I remember how many overs I needed to bowl to take a Test five-for.”Like the Eden Gardens Test of 2001, where Harbhajan spun India back into a dead series against Australia. It was a reminder of what five-day cricket enables: shifts in momentum, broken morale, revived belief.Spin bowling, too, became a focal point. Harbhajan bemoaned how the art has been diluted. “Spinners are supposed to spin the ball,” he said bluntly. “If you don’t spin it, you make life easy for batters. Whether it’s T20 or Tests, the basics don’t change.”He spoke about mindset as much as mechanics, about how spinners need courage because they can’t bowl bouncers or yorkers. Their only weapon, he insisted, is deception: in the air, off the pitch. “Aap ke haath se ball aadha chaand banake neeche girna chahiye,” he stressed.Would those attributes help if he bowled at Vaibhav Sooryavanshi? “My attitude will. I will try to get him first ball. Not save myself and bowl flat. My aggression may have landed me in trouble, but that is the only way I know,” he stressed.The topic veered quickly to another child prodigy turned legend. Birthday boy Tendulkar. Harbhajan spoke of him not as a distant icon but as a senior teammate and brother. Of someone disciplined and endlessly available. “On the field he was the great Tendulkar,” Harbhajan said and added with a wicked smile, “but in the dressing room, he was always Paaji, who gave juniors like me and Zaheer Khan the liberty to throw him into a jacuzzi in New Zealand after winning a Test in 2009.”The conversation shifted briefly to the laws of the game and whether he would change them to have a better balance between bat and ball. “Like a bowler is banned from bowling after two beamers, I want batters banned after two sixes,” Harbhajan joked.He quickly got serious, though. “The law is not the problem,” he said. “Wickets are. If you prepare good wickets, the balance comes naturally.” He cited spells like Mohammed Shami in Lucknow for LSG vs RR and the MI-CSK game, where quality spinners like Akeal Hosein and Noor Ahmad shaped outcomes. “The best T20 matches are often games where 160 or 170 gets defended,” he felt.At the history-soaked Brabourne, the message was clear: formats may change, leagues will mushroom, but only cricketers with patience, skill and courage to challenge the game will rule.
