Harbhajan Singh’s test career might have come to an end with his axing from the Indian playing XI for the second test match against Sri Lanka which was played at P Sara Oval, Sri Lanka.
Harbhajan had brought back into the Indian test side presumably on the insistence of the new captain Virat Kohli.
But, he failed to repay the faith put in him. He played in the one off game against Bangladesh and although, he got three wickets there, none of those wickets came when the batsman was trying to play a defensive shot.
However, despite that, he was retained for the Sri Lanka series and was even included in the playing XI for the Galle test match.
But, on a pitch, where the other two Indian spinners i.e. Ravichandran Ashwin and Amit Mishra enjoyed bowling a lot and shared 15 wickets between them, Harbhajan could get just one wicket in both the innings together and could not even manage to score some handy lower order runs.
India lost that game from a winning position and the think tank had no choice, but, to make some changes going further in the series and the first player whose place was found out to be quite vulnerable in the XI was Harbhajan.
The veteran off spinner was replaced by Stuart Binny and Binny, to his credit, made some crucial contributions in the remaining part of the series both with bat and ball.
So, he is all set to keep his place in the squad for the South Africa test matches coming up and it shouldn’t be surprising at all if Harbhajan’s name is missing when the next Indian test squad is announced.
Harbhajan has taken 417 wickets for India so far in 103 test matches at an average of a touch over 32.