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India's veteran off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, who recently retired from all forms of cricket, feels his contemporary players along with him could have had more years to their careers, had they received the same backing from the management as the former India captain MS Dhoni did.
"Dhoni had better backing than other players and if the rest of the players would have got the same kind of backing, then they would have played as well. It wasn't as if the rest of the players forgot to swing a bat or didn't know how to bowl all of a sudden," he told Zee News.
The 41-year-old who has a tremendous 711 international wickets -- 417 Test hunts, 269 ODI scalps, and 25 plucks in T20Is to his name, said he could have scooped another 100-150 wickets if the sudden ouster had not knocked on his door.
"Luck has always favoured me. Just some external factors were not by my side and maybe, they were completely against me. This is because of the way I was bowling or the rate at which I was moving ahead. I was 31 when I took 400 wickets and if I would have played another 4-5 years, keeping in mind the kind of standards I had set for myself, I can tell you that I would have taken another 100-150 wickets or more," he said.
The veteran made no bones in taking a dig at BCCI as he said he didn't get the support of the management.
“Yes. MS Dhoni was the captain then but I think this thing was above Dhoni’s head. To a certain extent, there were some BCCI officials who were involved in this and they didn’t want me and the captain may have supported that but a captain can never be above the BCCI. The BCCI officials have always been bigger than the captain, coach or the team,” Harbhajan said.
