Steve Harmison Offers Ashes Selectors Food for Thought

Steve Harmison's bowled out Ricky Ponting for England Lions against Australia to pose a question for the selectors ahead of The Ashes


After three days, there have been plus points for the watching selectors of both England and Australia. For the Lions the bowling of Steve Harmison and Graham Onions has been exceptional and the batting of the openers Stephen Moore and Joe Denly and later Steve Davis and Adil Rashid, a young man unfazed by the reputation of the opposition who took his score to 66 today, of England's 352, before falling to a fine gully catch. Of Ian Bell, the other player of interest to England, little was learned from his first baller other than Brett Lee is a very fine bowler and sent down a nasty delivery first up.

For Australia, Mike Hussey shrugged off a bad trot to use his time wisely in making a big hundred, and today Marcus North, a batsman for whom the word "journeyman" might have been coined until his Test debut in the winter, and promoted in the order for just such purpose as Hussey, made a century, while Michael Clarke enjoyed a lengthy net in the sun in making 80. Lee's bowling on the second day was spectacular stuff; a high-octane performance eventually giving him six for 76.

With the first Test approaching though, there were worrying negatives for the tourists. For the second day running Mitchell Johnson disappointed, taking the wicket of Tim Bresnan with the second new ball but finishing the innings with one for 118, leading to the conclusion that either he is short of bowling, hiding something, or not all he is cracked up to be. The first seems the likeliest option.

Ricky Ponting's twin failures, twice dismissed – by Onions in the first innings and Harmison in the second – in reaching out to the offside for deliveries he might well have ignored, would be a concern were he not one of the game's all-time giants: he knows what is needed although his old tendency to suggest an lbw possibility early on has been countered by a change in foot movement. A bit of adjustment needed.

But the manner in which twice Harmison ripped out Phillip Hughes, the most trumpeted young batsman in the world, provides a massive headache and food for thought for Andy Flower. In the first innings, having already hit him on the head with his first ball, Harmison found enough bounce at a sufficient lick to get him fending the ball to slip from in front of his nose. Today, changing the angle by bowling around the wicket, he caught him unable to sway back and out of the way of another throat-high bouncer that followed him, his glove punching the ball in a gentle parabola to third slip.

His eight runs had come from successive Harmison deliveries, each punched away through either side of square on the offside as the ball, from over the wicket and sufficiently short, left him enough room to free his arms. It is precisely the sort of shot and scoring area that accompanies his reputation as a plunderer of even marginally loose bowling.

Tellingly though, for someone who appears to need the momentum of boundaries to kick start his innings and gain the early ascendant, those two, the only ones he struck in his two innings, did not come until the 36th and 37th deliveries he received. If his natural game is to hang back on leg stump and wait for width, or even to backtrack further and create width of his own, then the England opening pair of Harmison and Onions starved him of that oxygen admirably. It is clear now that the strategy against him in Cardiff has to be likewise. He will know that, of course, and it would be a surprise if bowlers have not long since twigged that. But few have had this sort of success in countering him. Proper use of the new ball against him will be crucial.

© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 7/3/2009
 
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