There is a hoary old tale of a lower-league football manager, his side under the hammer, who sees one of his players carried off the field with concussion. At half-time he finds the doctor and the report is not promising. "He's conscious but can't remember who he is," the doctor says. "Well tell him he's Pele," replies the manager, "and send him back on."
For the first part of the Brisbane Test, one wondered if such an approach might have worked for Steve Harmison. They could have told him he was Courtney Walsh or Curtly Ambrose, the two great bowlers to whom he is most likened when at his best, and let him get on with it. Actually, come to think of it, they could have told him he was Steve Harmison.
A personal view is that Harmison emerged from his Brisbane nightmare with some credit, not for the manner in which he bowled, although that got steadily closer to the mark during Australia's second innings and towards the end of their first, but for the way in which he had the fortitude and dignity to carry it through and talk quite frankly about it later, albeit in his newspaper column.
It cannot have been easy to suffer the utter derision of 40,000 spectators and millions of television viewers without wishing to crawl away and hide. But Harmison has been through that before. Four years ago, in a warm-up match in Perth, he was so far off beam that it was considered a miracle he finished an over. Then, in the Test at the Waca, he lost his run-up and not only continued to bowl but did so commendably well.
That the occasion of firing the opening salvo of the most hyped series in cricket history got to him, as he confessed, is regrettable, but he would not have been alone in that regard. It was just that he was the first one over the top. In Adelaide, with the first match out of the way, expect everything to be a little less frenetic.
As it happened, Harmison was not alone in suffering embarrassment in Australia last week. While he was spraying the ball all round the Gabba Jon Abbott, an amateur golfer who had qualified for the Australian Masters, was doing likewise on the Huntingdale course in Melbourne, enduring the agony of total meltdown to his game.
A birdie at the 1st hole of the opening round, another at the last, and he eventually signed for a 95 (only to find it was actually a 96). Next day he completed only five holes of the second round before withdrawing, by which time his score stood at 38 over par. His swing, he said, had deserted him, not in that euphemistic manner in which the top players refer to a slight slump, but completely and utterly. Unlike Harmison and his bowling - a blip at worst - he may never get it back.
Harmison professes his love of home life and football and hates travelling, but that merely makes him human rather than a soft cricketer or poor competitor as many would have us think. If occasionally it seems hard to drag him into a match, then that may in part be down to a fear of not doing right by himself and his team-mates. He is a complex character. The former England captain Mike Brearley had a similar problem with that excellent bowler Chris Old, after whose health one never inquired lest there was a response. Once on the field he was utterly reliable.
To understand exactly what goes through a pace bowler's head, however, it does help to have been one. There is never a day when something does not ache, and that has to be coped with. Some do it better than others, occasionally to the point of recklessness. On the other hand, niggles that others might shrug off become major concerns simply because of the potential for disaster. There is a medium between the two. Harmison bowled last summer with sore shins and for a fast bowler who hammers his front foot into the deck, that hurts. He is not a wimp. Whatever anyone thought, he had his reasons for not wanting to play in the final warm-up match in Adelaide, from which he would have derived considerable benefit.
By the end of his bowling in Brisbane Harmison was looking more relaxed, even if the faulty technical element in his action - which took him to the Adelaide Oval for work yesterday afternoon while his team-mates relaxed after travelling - remained. He will get it right.
Twelve years ago in Brisbane, when Mark Taylor, like Ponting, surprised England by not enforcing the follow-on, one of England's opening bowlers, Martin McCague, who had been plastered all round the Gabba in the first innings, failed to come out for round two. Harmison did, and got stronger as a result. How he responds could be the key to this series. But Australians should write him off at their peril.
