Former India off-spinner R Ashwin has revealed a hilarious story about how he got to know that Harbhajan Singh was sharing posts on social media in Tamil during his IPL stint with Chennai Super Kings (CSK). However, Ashwin recalled that he learnt about the same after a Tamil commentator referred to Harbhajan Singh as Thiruvalluvar (Tamil poet and philosopher) during one of the IPL matches as well. Notably, Harbhajan represented CSK in the IPL for two seasons from 2018 to 2019.

In an interaction with Harbhajan on the ‘Kutti Stories with Ash’ podcast, Ashwin recalled, “There was an actor who used to do commentary in Tamil – RJ Balaji. I used to watch matches in Tamil because I found him funny. So, you were coming in to bowl and he was like, ‘Thiruvalluvar has come in to bowl’. I was like, what? Then I checked Twitter (now X) and realized that you were posting in Tamil. During IPL, the farther you remain from Twitter, the better.”

While talking about this, Harbhajan explained, “There was a guy called Saravanan, who helped me during my CSK days. I wanted to feel connected with people out there. There was already a connection, having played for India. But, when you are playing for the Yellow Army, you have to be part of that. This guy was a gem. He came up to me and asked me to post [in Tamil]. I believe that you can win over people by respecting their language.

“Whatever I wanted to say in Hindi or English, he used to write it for me in Tamil. I used to put it out there, and credit to him for wording it all so well. Suddenly, it became viral and I was on the news. Then someone made a YouTube story out of it,” he concluded.