Following Andrew Flintoff’s Test retirement, Steve Harmison is now making rumblings about leaving the international game. He says his body couldn’t last the 18 months that would take him up to the next Ashes series. Steve Harmison is 30 years old.

Flintoff has been in hospital about once a fortnight for as long as we can remember, but Harmison’s always seemed one of the less injury-prone pacemen. Whatever your opinion on Harmison’s bowling, it’s worrying that this is all we’ll get out of him.

Of England’s other recent fast bowlers, Simon Jones appears to have played his last Test when he was 27 and Darren Gough’s retirement was overdue at 32. However injury-prone these guys have been, the odd break from cricket might have helped.

We don’t want Test cricket overrun with line and length medium-pacers. Batsmen have everything in their favour. They should at least be in real danger of having their teeth knocked out.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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If there’s one thing England need more than anything else, it’s a fast bowler. If there’s one thing Steve Harmison isn’t at the moment, it’s a fast bowler.

The good news for Harmison is that nobody else is either, so all he really needs to address is that ‘at the moment’ part.

Some might say that the pitches for the recent Test series were unusually flat and that ordinarily you don’t need a fast bowler in Test cricket. We’d say the fact that the pitches were unusually flat only magnified the need for a fast bowler. Test pitches are always pretty flat.

But Harmison’s shown few signs of recovering pace and hostility over the winter, content to bowl fairly accurately at 82mph, which is hardly the point of Steve Harmison. Having run out of wrists to slap, Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss have dropped him down below an injured Ryan Sidebottom and a previously untested Amjad Khan in the pecking order.

With only two Tests before the Ashes and no chance of a recall – as that would render the kick up the arse of his dropping into yet another meaningless temporary exile – it’s impossible to see a way back for the lolloping ganglatron of mental fragility.

Yet in true English fashion, we’ve overlooked the one-dayers. England are highly likely to pick the hunchbacked spindlester for these, so he’s got a chance. While he’s widely thought to be no better than competent at one-day cricket, this overlooks the fact that by far the most influential bowling of his career took place in pyjamas.

No, not in his dreams – delete that comment and write something else. We’re referring to just prior to the 2005 Ashes in Bristol. Harmison dismissed Australia’s top four (Gilchrist, Hayden, Ponting and Martyn) to reduce Australia to 63-4 and then returned to clean bowl Mike Hussey, finishing with 5-33.

That, as much as the Lord’s bloodshedding that followed, scared the Aussie batsmen, who never fully recovered. Harmison should ask himself whether the Aussies are scared of him now. And he should answer honestly.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, New Zealand, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again using exactly the same words, because we aren’t going to improve on this:

For Steve Harmison, every innings is like a brief fairground ride with ghosts intermittently leaping out at you, only occasionally the ghosts give you sandwiches, but sometimes the sandwiches have horrifying fillings.

There, that’s pushed Laurence Elderbrook down a notch. You know what that means?

It means we’re one step closer to the NEXT Laurence Elderbook update. Woo hoo. All aboard the fun train.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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Lolloping ganglatron of mental fragility, Steve Harmison, took a hat-trick against champions Sussex over the weekend. We’re more interested in his opening spell during Sussex’s first innings though, where at one point he’d taken 2-7 off 11 overs.

Moping about in county cricket in a state of permanent ill-temper will do Harmison the power of good. If he gets to the point where he not only thinks he deserves to be in the England side, but is offended by being omitted, he’ll have attained a level of confidence he hasn’t seen in years.

The Steve Harmison who we all wanted Steve Harmison to become might yet come about. Not for a while though. Everyone look away and pretend you’re not interested.

This EXCLUSIVE photograph of the aftermath of Harmison’s hat trick was sent in by 668 Neighbour of the Beast. We haven’t had an exclusive since those ‘postal covers‘ two years ago – and they were only exclusive by default. No-one else could be bothered publishing anything about them.

Tags: County cricket news | County Championship, one-day and T20, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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The graph doesn’t lie. Steve Harmison’s performances have been deteriorating for ages now. There wasn’t going to be an upturn.

Last week Allan Donald revealed that Harmison had been scared while playing for England. There have been a lot of similar stories over the last year or so and they just seemed to be getting worse.

Sportsmen have to have confidence in their ability and Harmison hasn’t got this. The support of the coaches and selectors might even have been counterproductive. You can only build someone up when you’ve got something to build on. Harmison’s far from stupid and maybe he didn’t feel he justified this faith.

Without faith in himself, well-meaning words from others will have just made him feel like a fraud. He knew when he’d bowled badly and if Allan Donald, Ottis Gibson (what’s with the extra consonants?) or Peter Moores said he was improving or somesuch, he’d have seen through them.

The only way Harmison could have felt like he belonged in that England team was if he felt like he’d earned his place – and that was the one thing he didn’t feel.

Perhaps this all harks back to his initial emergence as an international cricketer. Duncan Fletcher requested pace and chose bowlers based on that attribute over all others, hoping to refine the players in question once they were in the England team. These players, of which Harmison is the most notable, to a large extent learned their trade while playing for England. Did they ever feel that they’d earned their places?

Contrast this with players such as Mike Hussey and Phil Jaques of Australia. These are players who have overachieved in domestic cricket for many years. When finally given their opportunity, they have no doubt whatsoever that they are there on merit and they have faith in their own ability as a consequence.

We’re not saying that Harmison never deserved to be an international cricketer, because he unquestionably did, if you look back (albeit a fair way now). We’re just saying that when things stopped going his way, he questioned himself and there weren’t any answers.

We dearly hope that Harmison goes back to Durham intending to win his England place back, because if he can achieve that, he’ll know he’s earned his spot and he might be a different bowler as a consequence.

It takes time to convince people though – especially yourself. Harmison should consider himself discarded by England for good. If he comes back to make an unarguable case from there, he should feel pretty confident.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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Steve Harmison’s playing in Test matches because he’s England’s most dynamic bowler, but there was no sign of that at Hamilton yesterday. Harmison says himself that he can’t bowl line and length, but instead sees himself as a 90mph strike bowler. It’s worrying that that’s his view as it sounds like an acceptance of low standards of accuracy.

Yesterday, however, he failed to deliver the positive element in that self-description. 90mph? Try 80. He falls away a bit towards the off-side and that affects his direction and pace. He’s struggling for confidence and he’s a slow starter to tours. England have a specialist bowling coach, but there’s enough there that Harmison, a grown man, really needs to sort it all out himself.

In Glenn McGrath’s first Test in England at Edgbaston in 1997, he returned the uncharacteristic bowling figures of 2-107 and 0-42 as England, powered by Nasser Hussain’s double hundred and the pace bowling of Gough, Malcolm and Caddick, won by nine wickets.

McGrath thought he’d bowled a yard too short throughout that match and spent an inordinate amount of time on the outfield after everyone had left, learning to bowl fuller. He placed a marker and he bowled at it until he got the feel for bowling that length. The next Test, at Lord’s, he took 8-38 as England were bowled out for 77 in their first innings.

An analyst didn’t identify that flaw and a coach didn’t tell him to rectify it. McGrath took responsibility for it himself and that’s why he was one of the greatest bowlers of all time. He identified his flaws and he rectified them.

For all the coaches and support staff, you’re actually on your own, Steve. You have to sort your bowling out yourself. The good news is that you’re the only one who has control over you and you have total control. Bowling with accuracy isn’t a pipe dream and it can be done at pace. It can even be done in your first over in a Test match.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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Pretty good, but he can do better still. We won’t really be satisfied until he runs through a side.

That’s what Steve Harmison’s supposed to do – the Dreamland Steve Harmison who we regularly summon up when things aren’t going England’s way. The not-at-all-real Steve Harmison who embodies English cricketing optimism.

Dreamland Steve Harmison can turn round ANY situation. Dreamland Steve Harmison wouldn’t be satisfied with a mere three wickets in an entire day. Sri Lanka would be following-on without England actually batting if Dreamland Steve Harmison had anything to say about it.

Sri Lanka v England, third Test, first day at Galle
Sri Lanka 147-4 (Mahela Jayawardene 51 not out, Steve Harmison 3-28)

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Sri Lanka, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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We hate it when England field a bowling attack which is heavily reliant on what you’d call the traditional English seam bowler. Hoggard, Sidebottom and Anderson are all great bowlers and if we’re honest, we’d probably have gone with that attack if we’d been in charge, but you always end up with a day where they’re being shuffled around and no-one’s taking any wickets.

We see and agree with the reasons for omitting Steve Harmison, but it does underline why we like him. You can’t pick a guy whose bowling line is set to ’shuffle’, but he’s resolutely not an English seam bowler. He’s 12 feet tall and he bowls quickly. It’s not that he’s capable of bowling quickly, it’s that he just does it. It’s his natural speed. In Sri Lankan conditions the ‘effort ball’ is pretty much an impossibility. Effortless speed is the only option.

Harmison’s not really the point though. The point is that England didn’t seem to have anything different when things weren’t going their way in the field. It’s always tempting to stock the team with faithful, reliable bowlers, but there are days when all you can rely on is nothing in the wickets column.

Tags: England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Steve Harmison by King Cricket
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