Steve puts critics on the back foot

Oct 4 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

Steve Harmison not only helped Durham win the County Championship this summer, but he rebuilt his international career in the process. In an exclusive interview, he talked to Chief sports writer Luke Edwards about the long road to salvation

HOTEL rooms can be lonely and depressing places, particularly when you are on the other side of the world and have just been told you have lost your England place and are gripped by a fear that your international career is over.

That is the situation Steve Harmison found himself in Hamilton back in March when a poor performance in the First Test against New Zealand prompted the England management to drop him and most observers to write his obituary as an international cricketer.

At his lowest point, Harmison believed them, but to accept the end without a fight would merely have confirmed what his most vehement critics had always suspected – that he lacked motivation, commitment and focus.

It is no coincidence that Durham’s fast bowler has shown all three in abundance in a remarkable season, which has seen Durham lift the County Championship, reach two cup semi-finals and Harmison regain his place as England’s premier strike bowler less than six months after he headed back to his home in Northumberland an England outcast.

“It is a season which began with me at my lowest ebb, but it is one I will look back on with an enormous sense of satisfaction,” said Harmison, who has spent much of this week at an England team building exercise in Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.

“I’ve achieved my own personal goal of getting back into the England team and Durham have won the title, I couldn’t have asked for much more. This has been a fantastic season for me, unbelievable really. We had our disappointments at Durham, losing in two semi-finals, but we kept on going. We got a bit of momentum behind us and it never really stopped. I’d set my heart on winning the title with Durham this season, I did that months ago, so to have achieved it really is something special.”

Professional sport is characterised by highs and lows, and is littered with those who have failed to recover from the setbacks which come their way.

For those who did not know him, for those who felt he was a lost cause and for those who did not share the Durham dressing room with him the 6ft 4in Harmison was expected to be one of them.

“When I was out of the team in New Zealand that was the hardest period,” he said, when asked whether he ever felt like quitting the game altogether. “I was cut up, hurt, stung, call it what you want. I just knew I wanted to come back and I knew I could come back.

“What have I learnt from the whole experience? I know who my friends are, that’s for certain. There were plenty of people willing to put the boot in back in the spring, but there were also people away from the newspapers and television cameras who were there to support me.

“I have a very strong family network and that helped. The thing is, when you walk through the door and there are four children waiting for you, they don’t care what is happening on a cricket pitch. That helps you put things into perspective.

“I don’t normally care what people think about me, I know they have called me arrogant and complacent in the past, but it was when I lost my place that it started to get through the defences. I was the brunt of everyone’s joke, or so it seemed. When something went wrong it seemed like, nine times out of 10, I got the blame. It happens like that sometimes.

“People were saying these things and it did make me angry initially. After that, I just shut it out and got on with trying to get my place back. Durham were great, they picked me up and put me back on my feet again. After that it was up to me.”

Indeed it was, and with 100 wickets in all competitions for Durham, Harmison was eventually recalled for the final Test match of the summer against South Africa, which England won, by new captain Kevin Pietersen.

A Test match recall was surprisingly followed by one-day redemption as Pietersen, recognising the impact Harmison had made in limited overs cricket for Durham, urged him to come out of international retirement.

“I have always loved playing for my country, but I still think you can fall back in love with something,” added Harmison, as he rests before a gruelling schedule of 10 series in 12 months which will climax with an Ashes series against Australia next summer.

“I wouldn’t say I’d taken playing for England for granted, but maybe I’d just got used to it. I’d been doing it for five or six years and you do believe you’ll always be there.

“That isn’t the case, of course, and when it was snatched away from me, it spurred me on to get it back as quickly as I could. I want that pressure and I want that expectation. I want to play in front of 20,000 people and I want to represent my country for as long as I possibly can.”

How long that will be, Harmison cannot tell, but he feels the time away from international cricket has been a blessing in disguise. After two years of injury problems he is fully fit and in the same sort of ferocious form that once made him the world’s best bowler.

He added: “I always felt confident I’d get back, I knew they couldn’t continue to ignore me because of the way I was playing for Durham. I’ve been bowling quickly and accurately for months. It wasn’t my job to call up the selectors and tell them to bring me back, they had to do that by themselves.

“Did people appreciate more when I wasn’t there? I don’t know, but I always knew I had qualities nobody else had. I got myself in shape, in form and the call eventually came. I’m delighted and I won’t be giving this place back up without a major fight.”