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Stephen Harmison, Durham and England aged 26 3/4

"I burst onto the scene four years ago, and bowled fast and was heralded as the next big thing. I did very well on my first big overseas tour to the West Indies taking a lot of wickets including 7 when we bowled them out for 45.

However things started to go wrong, the Aussies took me apart and every winter on tour I would get homesick for the Gallowgate End and I would be a reluctant tourist.

Soon technical flaws crept in but I did not really like my coaches and they sent me for psychological testing which was gobbledygook to me. I was still bowling fast but the wickets were becoming fewer.


Last winter I was out of form again. I bowled the first ball of the Ashes series, straight to second slip for a wide. The Aussies jeered me and I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

At the end of the poor tour I decided to retire from one day cricket in case a less onerous schedule might help.

In the first test of this summer I sprayed it all over the place again, against under-prepared opponents who I needed to bowl asccurately to in helpful conditions.

I don't respond to coaching, I am hugely suspect temperamentally, I hate it when I am not in the North East and I think I should be dropped until I rediscover some of that which has been missing for three years"

Tests 1 to 10: 28 wickets at an average of 36
Tests 11 to 20: 59 wickets at 19
Tests 21 to 30: 34 wickets at 35
Tests 31 to 40: 34 wickets at 32
Tests 41 to 50: 34 wickets at 37

He's just an average player who had a good spell.

nail on head


Although having very little between his ears obviously doesn't help.

Is that not true though for all the England bowlers in the current test team?

Most of them had a good spell in the ashes series a few years back and ever since have been exposed as just average. If you were going to pick a cricket dream team XI then chances are there wouldnt be an english bowler amongst them.

I'm not so sure of that being the case (I'd concede the dream XI at the minute).

Flintoff usually looks good with the ball, it's his batting going wrong at the moment.
Hoggard and Panesar are doing good jobs.

The biggest problem is it's very hard to build up pressure when the other bowlers are inconsistent and give away easy runs without threatening to take wickets - just defend the good bowlers and feats on the buffet bowling.

I'm looking forward to the return of Simon Jones too, I think we could have a nice bowling unit then!

and injuries........

and late night pedal-lo related incidents.......

;)

Jones is a huge miss (not Geraint ;) ).

I agree with Bongo here.Hoggy has been a consistent performer for England home and away for the last 5 years, he has hardly ever let us down. Monty is our best spinner for a generation, though he hardly has much competition for that accolade. Jones looked a real talent before his injuries. Freddie's bowling has been still of good quality and justifies his place in the team at the moment as a bowler

Unfortunately the rest of our attack is inconsistent Anderson, Plunkett, Harmison etc....

I agree. Simon Jones has always been class for England.

Such a horrific injury.

I point all the cricket fans in this thread to the great game of battrick:
http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=19503.0

As ever, Geoff Boycott hit the nail on the head about England's bowling attack. He made the point that with the two most consistantly good pace bowlers of the last ten years (McGrath and Pollock), neither of them are particularly quick, or frightening. But you could put a teatowel on the pitch on a length just outside off stump and they'd land the ball on it six balls out of six. When a bowler is not giving any bad balls it puts pressure on the batsman and he'll make a mistake.

With Harmison, Mahmood and the others spraying the ball about like a four-year old having a wee then batsmen just have to wait for the inevitable bad ball and they'll comfortably score runs.

I was very surprised to see Ryan Sidebottom in the team - I can only assume Andy Caddick can't be far away from a recall :)

I don't think any of our bowlers have been the same since we lost the bowling coach who went to Australia.

Those stats. might well back up my theory.

I think people sometimes expect too much from our sportsmen.

They are human and it seems Harmison suffers from the normal insecurties many people do. Shocker he prefers not to tour and gets homesick! He has really bad spells where he cant hit the wicketweeper let alone the wickets! He aint a robot :) 

Boycott made exactly the same point, using the same examples, on last night's TMS as well.


How I never got that job as England selector I'll never know. :)

Lol it was a good post until you mentioned Sidebottom. Who has been Englands best bowler in the last year by doing exactly what your advocating putting the ball in the right place consistently.

Is Simon Jones back in the frame? I haven't heard anything about him for ages now.

fit, and has signed for Worcestershire this season