ਹਰਭਜਨ ਸਿੰਘਹਰਭਜਨ ਸਿੰਘ

ਮੁੱਢਲਾ ਜੀਵਨ

Harbhajan Singh Plaha was born on 3 July 1980 in Jalandhar, Punjab, into a Ramgarhia Sikh family, the only son among six children of Sardar Sardev Singh Plaha, a freedom fighter who owned a ball-bearing and valve factory. He grew up with five sisters in a household where his father, having fought for the country's freedom, expected discipline and hard work.

His first coach, Charanjit Singh Bhullar, trained him as a batsman. When Bhullar died, the boy came under Davinder Arora, who saw a spinner's wrist in him and converted him to off-spin bowling, the decision that made his career. Still a teenager, he made his Test debut for India against Australia at Bangalore on 25 March 1998 and his one-day debut against New Zealand on 17 April the same year. The early years were uneven: questions over the legality of his bowling action and disciplinary trouble kept interrupting him, and by 2001 his international career looked as if it might stall.

The 2001 breakthrough

Then came the 2000–01 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Australia had won sixteen Tests in a row and looked unbeatable. With Anil Kumble injured, captain Sourav Ganguly pushed hard for Harbhajan's inclusion, and the off-spinner seized the series. At Eden Gardens in Kolkata, in India's famous follow-on victory, he dismissed Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne with successive balls: the first Test hat-trick by an Indian. He finished the match with figures of 13 for 196.

He ended the series with 32 wickets at 17.03, man of the match and man of the series, as India won 2–1. Overnight, the boy from Jalandhar was a national hero. The Punjab government rewarded him with five lakh rupees, a plot of land and a Deputy Superintendent of Police post, which he accepted later.

At the top of his game

Between 1998 and 2016, Harbhajan played 103 Tests (417 wickets) and 236 one-day internationals (269 wickets) for India, along with 28 T20 internationals. A tall off-spinner who got sharp turn and bounce and bowled a much-discussed doosra, he was India's frontline spinner through the 2000s. He was part of three triumphant squads, the 2007 T20 World Cup, the 2011 ODI World Cup and the 2002 Champions Trophy, and in 2009 he received the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour. Ricky Ponting, the great Australian captain, fell to him ten times in Test cricket.

Domestically he turned out for Punjab for over two decades, with county spells at Surrey and Essex. In the IPL he played for the Mumbai Indians from 2008 to 2017, leading them to the 2011 Champions League Twenty20 title and taking the man-of-the-match award in the final, and later for the Chennai Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Controversies and setbacks

A career this combative was never quiet. In December 2004 his doosra was officially reported during the second Test against Bangladesh at Chittagong; the ICC examined his action and cleared him. In January 2008, during the Sydney Test against Australia, he was accused of racially abusing Andrew Symonds, the affair known as Monkeygate. Match referee Mike Procter banned him for three Tests; on appeal, ICC commissioner Justice John Hansen found the racism charge not proved and revoked the ban, instead fining him half his match fee for abusive language.

Three months later, in the IPL at Mohali, he slapped S. Sreesanth during the post-match handshakes after a Mumbai Indians–Kings XI Punjab game. He was banned for the rest of the 2008 IPL and forfeited his season's salary, and the BCCI added a five-match one-day ban. His form faded after the 2011 World Cup triumph; his last Test came in August 2015 against Sri Lanka and his last T20 international in March 2016 against the UAE.

What is Harbhajan Singh doing now?

He announced his retirement from all forms of cricket on 24 December 2021, on social media. Since then he has built a second career in the media, as a cricket commentator and television host, and kept acting: cameos as himself in films such as Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004), the Punjabi comedy Bhaji in Problem (2013) and Dikkiloona (2021), plus a lead role as Bhagat Singh in the Tamil film Friendship. He had earlier won the television show Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena in 2008.

In March 2022 the Aam Aadmi Party nominated him to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab; he was elected unopposed, took office on 9 April 2022 and was sworn in that July. In April 2026 he quit the AAP along with six fellow Rajya Sabha MPs and joined the BJP, a move that drew AAP protests outside his Jalandhar home, as reported by the PTI news agency.

Personal life

Harbhajan married actress Geeta Basra on 29 October 2015 in Jalandhar. Their daughter Hinaya Heer was born on 27 July 2016, and their son Jovan Veer Singh Plaha on 10 July 2021.

Legacy

"Bhajji", "the Turbanator", was the spinner who ended Australia's long dominance and gave India its first Test hat-trick. With more than 700 wickets in international cricket across formats, he stands among the greatest off-spinners the game has known. His journey from a Jalandhar factory family to the Rajya Sabha, via Eden Gardens and two World Cups, remains one of Indian sport's great arcs.