On of the darkest periods of Indian cricket was in 2008 when Harbhajan Singh got engulfed in the Monkey Gate Scandal. The Indian off spinner was alleged to have uttered a racist comment to Andrew Symonds. Harbhajan was banned for three test matches, however the ban was uplifted after BCCI protested against it.

Recalling the incident, Harbhajan Singh told in a recent podcast that he uttered a local Punjabi slang to Andrew Symonds which got misinterpreted as Monkey. But the strange thing was not the reaction of Andrew Symonds but rather the behavior of Australian players who took Symond’s side without being in the vicinity of the incident.

“The area where me and Symonds were having a spat at each other, no one was there except Sachin Tendulkar. Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and neither saint Gilchrist who himself haven’t done anything wrong on cricket field, wasn’t there. They all became witnesses and said that they heard a racist comment from Harbhajan Singh for Andrew Symonds that he called him a monkey. If anybody could have heard, it would have been Sachin Tendulkar only. When it was 4 vs 1, then the statement of the majority would be accepted as truth. And the match refree took their side and banned me.”

After BCCI threatened to pull off the tour, Cricket Australia let go off the ban on the Indian off-spinner. Relations soured between the two cricket teams after that incident and there always existed tension between Symonds and Harbhajan in every game after that. The sourness finally got dissolved when both Harbhajan and Symonds became a part of Mumbai Indians set up and the two mended their relation. Sadly, Symonds passed away at the mere age of 46 in May 2022.

Australia back in the early and late 2000s had a dominating attitude towards their opposition. In one of the test matches on that tour, Sourav Ganguly was given out by the umpire for a doubtful slip catch after Ricky Ponting confirmed to the umpire that the catch was cleanly taken without the ball touching the ground.

Harbhajan Singh is all set to join the commentator’s panel for the pink ball second test between India and Australia starting on 6th December.