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|| India Correspondent ||
Former India player Gautam Gambhir believes that veteran spinner Harbhajan Singh is slightly ahead of Ravichandran Ashwin, who had crossed the 400 Test wicket landmark during the third Test against England in Ahmedabad. Gambhir also admitted that it's difficult to compare both but he also pointed to the absence of DRS and the nature of pitches where Harbhajan Singh had to play and that's the reason for him choosing Harbhajan over Ashwin as well.
Harbhajan had picked up 417 wickets from 103 Tests apart from 269 wickets from 236 ODIs in his cricketing career. He was a part of the Indian team that won the ICC World Cup in 2011. He is the third-highest wicket-taker in Tests for India as well.
"It's difficult to compare eras, but at the moment I would feel that with everything around, I would still rate Harbhajan better when he was at his peak. And Ashwin at the moment is probably the best off-spinner in the world but if I have to compare with Harbhajan Singh, with the kind of wickets he played on with no DRS," Gautam Gambhir said on the 'Runorder' show on ESPNCricinfo.
Gambhir also said that Harbhajan specialised in bowling a 'doosra' which Ashwin did not bowl and he called Ashwin a better package.
"At the same time, Harbhajan had that advantage of bowling a doosra. He [Ashwin] doesn’t have that option because doosra is not allowed by a finger spinner," Gambhir further added. "Despite of that, the amount of variations Ashwin has, it’s a tough one but at the moment, I would still give it to Harbhajan Singh. If I talk from the overall package point of view, Ashwin is probably a better package than Harbhajan purely from a bowler’s point of view."