Harbhajan Singh was bit of a 'nemesis', claims Adam Gilchrist

Harbhajan Singh was bit of a 'nemesis', claims Adam Gilchrist

no photo

Former Australian wicket-keeper batsman Adam Gilchrist claimed that Harbhajan Singh was one of the toughest bowlers that he had to face in his career and called him his 'nemesis'. Gilchrist gave special mention to the 2001 series where Australia failed to beat India in the famous Kolkata Test.

Arguably one of the best wicket-keeper batsmen to have ever graced the game of cricket, Adam Gilchrist has been a nightmare for many bowlers in the world. But he himself believes that India's off-spinner Harbhajan Singh was one of the bowlers that he just wasn't comfortable facing and revealed that Harbhajan always used to find a way to get him out.

Gilchrist spoke about the 2001 Australia's tour of India and the Test series then which according to Steve Waugh was the 'final frontier' for the Australian team to conquer. Gilchrist had played one of the best innings of his career in the first Test in Mumbai on a turning track, scoring an 80-ball century helping Australia win the first Test, but India's remarkable win in Kolkata and then a close win in Chennai deprived Australia of conquering their final frontier.

"We were five for 99. I went in there, got a hundred 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've only got to fast-forward to the next Test match and I came back to reality," Gilchrist was quoted as saying by Times of India.

Gilchrist believed that after the first Test, the Australians realised that it was also very important to have a tight defence and stated that Harbhajan bowled beautifully for the remainder of the series, in turn confusing the Australian batsmen.

"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, attack, 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 Murali (Muttiah Muralitharan) probably the two hardest bowlers to face," he asserted.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all