It's been a rather rocky fortnight for Indian cricket. Three defeats in the first three matches in the Coca-Cola Cup tri-series in Colombo clearly indicate that the team is fighting an uphill task to keep their chances alive in the competition. The batting has presented more problems than the bowling and the only silver lining in this non-performance has been provided by Harbhajan Singh.

The ace Indian off spinner, who turned 21 earlier this month, has done what was expected of him. In a rather thin bowling line-up, he has been the kingpin of the attack. If the reputation of several players took a nosedive in the competition, Harbhajan has seen to it that his reputation has remained intact. Bowling in probing fashion, he has picked up six wickets from 28 overs conceding 96 runs in the three matches so far.

In the opening match against New Zealand, Harbhajan picked up the wickets of Fleming and Vincent and with figures of 10-1-25-2 did the most to keep the Kiwi score down to 211 for eight in 50 overs.

Harbhajan was in even better form in the following game against Sri Lanka. Again he did a commendable job in curbing the free stroking batsmen and restricting the home team to 221 for nine in 50 overs, picking up three wickets, those of Jayasuriya, Atapattu and Vaas. It was a clever piece of bowling that saw Jayasuriya stumped. With figures of 10-1-29-3, he had reason to hope that he had done enough to ensure an Indian victory but the batsmen failed to follow up on his good work.

Admittedly, Harbhajan was not at his best in the return game against New Zealand as his figures of 8-1-42-1 would convey. He had just the wicket of Oram to show for his efforts. But there is little doubt that even as the Indian team floundered from one disaster to disaster, Harbhajan did enough to pick himself as our cricketer of the fortnight.

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Milestones Harbhajan's hat trick in Kolkata [ Scorecard | Match Report | Ball-by-Ball | Player v Player Statistics] Career ODI milestones on Stats Guru [ Click ]