'Moin Khan used to tell Saqlain Mushtaq to bowl it' - Harbhajan Singh reveals how the term 'doosra' came in

‘Doosra’ is a bowl which was made famous by Saqlain Mushtaq. In fact, many experts have credited him with creating that delivery. It is a difficult ball to face and many batsmen have fell prey to this variation. However, there was one Indian spinner who could bowl this delivery and it was Harbhajan Singh.

The off-spinner in an interview recently has revealed that it was this one skill which helped him to get into the Indian team. He also stated that Mushtaq was someone who was a total match-winner for Pakistan. In fact, it should be noted that Mushtaq wasn’t celebrated as Muttiah Muralitharan or Shane Warne, but his skill set was tremendous and unparallel to that any spinner in the world at the time.

No one else bowled ‘doosra’ in India that time: Harbhajan Singh

“There weren’t many bowlers who bowled the doosra back then,” Harbhajan said. “Saqlain Mushtaq was one such bowler. He was immense, a match-winner for his team. Even if he was bowling the last over and you needed only four runs, you’d think he won’t let you score them. So it was that doosra that got me into the Indian team,” Harbhajan said as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.

Harbhajan Singh further said that no one else in India was able to bowl a doosra. He explained how that particular ball which pitched and turned away from the batsmen was named doosra. The word doosra in Hindi actually means, ‘the other one’.

The Punjab spinner revealed that while Mushtaq used to bowl, Moin Khan, Pakistan’s wicketkeeper would keep asking him to bowl ‘the other one’, which eventually led everyone to start calling that ball a ‘doosra’.

“No one else bowled the doosra in India, which pitched and turned away from the batsman and that delivery of mine was, I think, better than the ones bowled by other off-spinners. I used to call it leg-cutter but it came to be known as the doosra because Moin [Khan] would shout from behind the stumps, asking Saqlain to bowl doosra (the other one). And that’s how it got famous,” he said.

A few days ago, Saqlain had also praised Harbhajan by saying that he had the potential to pick up more wickets for India.