When Harmanpreet Kaur lifted India’s first ever ICC Women’s World Cup last year, the first call she made was a video call to her younger brother Gurjinder Singh Bhullar. Her best friend, her confidante, her Garry. “She called me and said Garry, hum jeet gaye World Cup, with tears of joy running down both our cheeks,” recalls Gurjinder, who now lives in Australia.
Long before the World Cups, the captaincy and the stardom, there was Moga, Punjab. Harmanpreet recalls, “My brother is my first friend and my cheerleader. We grew up sharing one bat and he always let me go bat first.” Today, even with the world’s best coaches in her corner, Harmanpreet still picks up the phone for Gurjinder. “I call him to this day and ask — Garry, aaj achi rahi na batting — or just to get tips because he is such a talented cricketer himself. . He being the youngest always had the privilege to do what he loves and I feel it’s my responsibility to spoil him and give him the best life I always dreamt of.”
She smiles recalling a childhood memory that says everything about the two of them. “I would sit him on the front of my bicycle and ride in the heat. Whenever he refused, I told him my bicycle had a radio. I would sing to him the entire ride and he assumed it was the radio and not me. That memory always makes me smile.”
Opening the batting against the boys. Harman used to play with her brother and her cousins and that is when Garru noticed something special, “ She was an opening batter and we all just treated her as a batter and not a girl because she was that good,” Gurjinder says. “One day she scored 100 runs in just 6 overs. That is when I knew she was going to do something special.”
And behind the fierce captain the world sees on the field? Gurjinder knows exactly who she really is. “She is still a kid. Same laughs, same things make her happy. And she is not as aggressive as she looks on the field,” he says — and then laughs.
