Mumbai: Former Indian star off-spinner Harbhajan Singh has come down heavily on former ICC umpire Darrell Hair, who sarcastically picked out three subcontinent spinners — Saqlain Mushtaq, Muthiah Muralitharan and himself — as ‘role models’ for chuckers in a recent interview.
“This is too much. We didn’t cross the limit but now Hair is ‘crossing the limit”. Unka dimag theekane nahi [He seems to have gone mad]”, the 35-year-old said in an exclusive chat over telephone.
“We were always within the permissible limit. Me and Muralitharan were cleared by the ICC more than once and why didn’t Hair object to my bowling thereafter? Was it because he was afraid of losing his job as an ICC umpire? We are not son-in-laws of the ICC,” Harbhajan added.
Harbhajan was tested and cleared twice — in 1999 in England and in 2005 in Australia.
“The present day bowlers are trying to bowl doosra, which was invented by us. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are bending arms more than the limit. The doosras can be bowled without bending the arms too much,” added Harbhajan.
“The ICC has set a standard for bowlers and is using the latest technology. Hair should stop challenging the technology and better keep his mouth shut.”
Hair, who had reported Muralitharan for a suspect action during a Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1995, maintained that the ICC should have taken action back then. “Whatever they’re doing now, they’re doing 20 years too late,” he said in a recent interview.
“They had a chance in 1995 to clean things up and it’s taken them 19 years to finally come back and say they want chuckers out of the game.
“I can’t believe that Saaed Ajmal has been able to bowl as long as he has, and they say he is bending his arm by 45 degrees or something. Well, every man and his dog would have known that. I suppose what it does show is the general weakness of the umpires over time to do anything about it.”
The buzz doing the rounds in Australia is that Hair may be assigned an advisory role for next year’s World Cup. However, it is to be seen whether the ICC takes such a bold step with the very umpire who handed over his resignation after falling out with the international governing body of the game.
— The writer is a freelance cricket journalist.
