Bhajji wants to please Gavaskar

Over the last ten years he has proved himself with cricket ball, and now Harbhajan Singh wants to score a century to fulfill the wish of Indian batting legend Sunil Gavaskar.

Harbhajan is hoping that soon there will be a moment in his career when he will lift his bat after scoring a hundred.

"In a function in Mumbai, recently, Sunil Gavaskar wanted to know when I would hit my first hundred. Coming from him it was a huge thing. Hopefully there would soon be a cause for cheer and it would be for Sunny bhai," said Harbhajan ahead of the Champions Trophy in Johannesburg.

Harbhajan has a lot of batting highlights to his credit. He missed an opportunity of scoring a century in Australia in 2007.

Earlier, he once helped India win a Test against Zimbabwe in Bulawayo in 2001, besides saving one against the same team in a Delhi Test.

Expectations sure are no less on Harbhajan the bowler. He is fresh from a five-wicket haul against Sri Lanka in the Compaq Cup finals. But handling pressure comes easy to Harbhajan.

"I like pressure. You want to do better when you are required the most. You deliver when the team needs it. Challenges lift me up. Light and soft matches aren't that motivating," he said. Harbhajan is rated an extraordinary slow bowler in the Twenty20 format as he varies his deliveries and read a batsman's mind instantly.

He claims that the bowling strategy in one-dayers is vastly different from a Twenty20 game.

"Ten overs are a lot of overs. You get to bowl in three or four spells. Sometimes you are looking to save runs. On other occasions, you want to attack and pick up wickets."

India could be struggling with its fifth bowling option in South Africa as the conditions here are vastly different to that in the sub-continent, where part-time slow bowlers can flourish and Harbhajan has no hesitation in accepting that.

"I wish we had a bowling all-rounder, somebody like Shaun Pollock. That would really help the team."