Harbhajan Singh

Harbhajan Singh is an Indian international cricketer

Harbhajan Singh Plaha ( born 3 July 1980 in Jalandhar, Punjab, India), commonly known as Harbhajan Singh or simply Harbhajan, is an Indian international cricketer, who plays all forms of the game cricket. A specialist spin bowler, he has the second-highest number of Test wickets by an off spinner, behind Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan.

He is the former captain of IPL team Mumbai Indians and Punjab for the 2012–13 Ranji Trophy season.

Following a few poor performances, Harbhajan was injured in India's tour of England in the summer/monsoon of 2011 and was ruled out of the rest of the series. Harbhajan was also not selected for the Australian tour and the 2012 Asia Cup in Bangladesh. He was, however, included in 30 probables for the World T20 tournament held in Sri Lanka in September 2012. He was recalled to the Test squad after a gap of more than a year against New Zealand at the end of August 2012. Harbhajan was dropped from the test team after the 2013 series against Australia. He was called back to the test team after 2 years for a solitary test against Bangladesh.

Following performances in IPL for Mumbai Indians in 2015 and 2014, he was included in the test team captained by Virat Kohli against Bangladesh for the one-off test match in Fatullah. He took 3 wickets in that test to overtake Wasim Akram in the list of most test match wickets to become the ninth highest wicket-taker in Tests. He was then called up for the ODI and T20I teams when a second-string Indian side toured Zimbabwe to play 3 One-day and 2 Twenty-20 matches. Though he did not take many wickets in that tour, he was impressive maintaining a tight line and stopping the flow of runs.

Harbhajan returned with figures of 2/29 in his first T20 international over two and a half years. He was in the squad for the 3 test away series against Sri Lanka led by Virat Kohli. He replaced injured Ashwin in series against South Africa. He was also part of the team that played 3 T20I matches against Australia, home series against Sri Lanka, Asia Cup in Bangladesh. He played only one match in the Asia Cup against UAE. He was also part of the T20 World Cup that took place in India but did not play any of the matches.

Harbhajan was again excluded from the Indian squad for the 2017 Champions Trophy in England. After hearing of his exclusion, Harbhajan claimed he did not receive the same "privileges" other veteran cricketers, namely MS Dhoni, have been afforded by the national selectors.