Courtesy: Star Sports
Harbhajan Singh, the former Indian cricketer, relived the infamous Sydney Test match versus Australia in 2008, during his commentary stint in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) series with Star Sports on their broadcast. The 44-year-old criticised umpire Steve Bucknor, hailing from the Caribbean, for his mistakes from 16 years ago, costing India the Sydney Test before sarcastically mentioning that he had debuted for Australia in the contest.
Notably, in the 2008 Sydney Test match between Australia and India, the umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson had a game to forget as they made a few glaring errors with their decision-making, which ended up being more costly for the visitors. In the same contest, the shocking “MonkeyGate Scandal” took place, which mainly involved Harbhajan Singh and late great Andrew Symonds, and it led to a lot of bad blood between both the teams for the remainder of the BGT series over a decade and half ago.
At one point Ricky Ponting caught one and gave it out himself: Harbhajan Singh on happenings in 2008 Sydney Test
In one of his stints with Star Sports on their Hindi broadcast, a clip of which was posted on their official X account, Harbhajan Singh, who still isn’t pleased with what happened in the 2008 Sydney Test match, was quoted as saying, as per the Times of India, “There were a lot of edges, but Bucknor saab didn't give anything out. There were edges, there were appeals, and at one point Ricky Ponting caught one and gave it out himself.”
“In that series, Bucknor made his debut for Australia. He played so well in that match for them (…) The only thing he was interested in was being the 12th man,” he sarcastically added. Moreover, during his interview with Mid-Day in 2020, Steve Bucknor had admitted that he made a couple of errors in the 2008 Sydney Test match between Australian and India, which seemingly haunted him even after his umpiring days were over.
“I made two mistakes in the Sydney Test in 2008. Mistake one, which happened when India were doing well, allowed an Australian batsman to get a hundred. Mistake two, on day five, might have cost India the game. But still, they are two mistakes over five days. Was I the first umpire to make two mistakes in a Test? Still, those two mistakes seem to have haunted me,” Steve Bucknor said.
