India’s bowling legend Harbhajan Singh took to his official Instagram handle in the early hours today and shared a rare autograph sheet from the 2007 ICC ODI World Cup. The sheet with autographs of legendary players like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, and others left the fans in awe. Sharing the picture, Harbhajan revealed fans across the world used to receive these sheets, prior to the selfie era.
“Worldcup 2007 Team.. Autograph sheets we use to sign for fans across the world .. Ab selfie ka zamana hai . Par autograph sab k pass pahunchte the selfie k liye koi koi pass aa sakta hai,” Harbhajan Singh wrote in caption.
Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, MS Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Sreesanth, Dinesh Karthik, Munaf Patel, Robin Uthappa.
This was the last World Cup appearance for Indian cricket legends like Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, and Anil Kumble.
While India traveled to the World Cup in West Indies with their hopes high, they suffered a pretty disappointing campaign and exited the tournament from the group stage. The Indian cricket fans were much disappointed with the national team’s performance at the marquee event.
However, a few months later a young Indian side under MS Dhoni’s captaincy scripted history by winning the inaugural edition of the ICC T20 World Cup in 2007.
The T20 World Cup victory marked the beginning of a new era for the Indian cricket team, which played a fearless brand of cricket.
Thereafter, the 2011 World Cup was the last appearance for big players like Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, and Zaheer Khan. India failed to achieve the World Cup glory during the next two editions of the tournament in 2015 and 2019. Under Virat Kohli’s captaincy, India reached the semifinals of the prestigious tournament in 2019, but failed to advance to the final. The semi-final loss to New Zealand was Dhoni’s last World Cup as well as international appearance.
Harbhajan Singh, popularly known as “Bhajji”, took 417 Test wickets from 103 years in a glorious career which lasted over 17 years. He was no less a force with the bat, getting 2224 runs with two hundreds and nine fifties.
So it was in one-day internationals where Harbhajan took 269 wickets from 236 games. He also proved his adaptability in changing cricket landscape by representing India in 28 T20 internationals and picking up 25 wickets. For a number of years, Harbhajan was a star for Mumbai Indians largely in the IPL.
