Former Australian pace bowler Brett Lee recently recalled Team India’s veteran offspinner Harbhajan Singh as being a challenge to bowl due to his annoying mind games. While the spinner often tormented Australia with the ball in the 2000s, his batting in the lower-order often frustrated the Aussie bowlers as well. Notably, he scored over 3,500 runs across formats in international cricket with two centuries and nine half-centuries as well.

While talking, Lee surprisingly told the LiSTNR Sport podcast, “Harbhajan Singh. I hated bowling to him because he used to annoy the hell out of me, and I’ve told him this. He is an absolute legend of a bloke; I hope he hears this because – and he knows – he used to frustrate the sh** out of me when I bowled to him. He would sledge and he would hop in and going after me, ‘You’re quick’. I could never get him; I was always exhausted.”

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“When he came in to bat, it was at the wrong end of a spell. When I said, ‘Mate, you’re a bloody ripping bloke. Why don’t you show me how good you are or how nice you are? He goes, ‘because I like that edge. I want to come across as if I am arrogant, or a person who is chirping in.’ So he was giving it back to us what we gave to them. Lovely guy,” he again shared.

However, Brett Lee further felt that Indian players had derived confidence in facing Australia after the famous stand between VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid in the Kolkata Test of 2001 as well.

“It started in that game when Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman batted the whole day. I was injured at home, watching it with my arm in a sling. It was them saying, ‘We can match Australia. Not just match; we can beat them’. And now with Kohli, I love the way Kohli plays. He is such a good player… with that aggression. And you’ve got different guys like back in the day, MS Dhoni… didn’t say anything. Just did what he had to do and wouldn’t back down,” concluded Brett Lee.