Harbhajan no-balled for spinning the ball

Bewildered umpires no-balled discarded India bowler Harbhajan Singh for what they called "strange and suspicious action on the ball" during a recent Ranji Trophy match between Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

According to umpire K Bharatan, the ball in question had unexpectedly "turned a little after pitching".

"In all my years as an umpire, I've never seen anything like it from Harbhajan Singh," said the visibly flummoxed official at close of play. "I mean, you might expect this sort of behaviour from others, but from him?" he said, shaking his head incredulously. "I don't know what he did to the ball at the point of delivery, but unlike any of the other 150 or so balls he'd bowled in the match, or the 30,000 or so bowled over the course of his career, the seam on this particular delivery could be seen actually turning on its way to the other end. The way the ball then spat and turned off the pitch before being smothered by the blade of the surprised batsman, I just knew something was amiss."

After consulting with the square-leg umpire, Bharatan decided there was only one thing he could do. "We decided to call no-ball, because we didn't know quite what to make of the situation. The fact of the matter is, there is no rule or law in the game as yet that takes into account such a scenario as Harbhajan Singh actually spinning the ball," he shrugged.

TV commentator and former India spinner L Sivaramakrishnan, however, took exception with the umpires. "I don't understand their actions. Yes, at first that ball confused me as well. It looked so strangely familiar, yet I just couldn't put my finger on it. Only later did I realise that it was a perfectly legal offspinner's delivery. The umpires should have realised this sooner, and instead of no-balling the bowler, ejected him from the field of play entirely, on suspicion of obtaining unfair, and possibly illegal, assistance to make the ball behave in a way that he wouldn't ordinarily have been able to."

However, the batsman who faced the mystery ball, Suresh Raina, was quick to clarify after the match that he didn't think there was any malice on the part of his former India team-mate. "I know Bhajji for a while now, and I can safely say in his defence that the ball spinning as it did must have been an accident. Maybe it hit a crack in the pitch or something. I know enough in all my years of playing with him that Bhajji bhai never could have done something like that on purpose, intentionally or otherwise, be it through unfair means or natural ability."

Harbhajan said he was upset that the umpires had decided to pick on him when he was trying to make a comeback to the Indian team. "Sure, it was a strange delivery, and to be honest I don't even know how I did it. In fact, I wouldn't know how to replicate it, if asked. But I'm still a little upset they made such a big deal about it."

The former India star, who went wicketless in the match, then came out with a stunning revelation that he hoped "will not rock the cricketing world too much in these troubled days for the game".

"I happen to know that a lot of bowlers around the world do this sort of thing intentionally. I don't like naming names, because I'm not that kind of guy, but people like Shane Warne, Muralitharan, hell, even this new kid, Ashwin, have all made the ball move in a similarly spooky way, and on purpose. If they can do it, why can't I?

"Don't answer that," he said.

Harbhajan added that he'd even heard of some bowlers who could spin the ball at will in either direction. "God knows what form of black magic they're practising," he said in a hushed voice.

The bowler later appealed the no-ball, and after being presented before a hastily convened committee for arbitration was exonerated and the no-ball retracted. The committee apparently came to its decision after unanimously concluding that Harbhajan could not have spun the ball on purpose, and was satisfied that the incident was as likely to occur again as his not being picked for the Indian team mid-way through the series against West Indies for no good reason whatsoever.