The trouble with Steve Harmison…

What, I wonder, is Steve Harmison’s ideal job? To hear him moaning about his lot, you’d have thought he was stitching footballs in a third-world sweat shop. After another display which, at best, almost reached lacklustre levels, he gave a rambling, incoherent and self-pitying interview on Sky where he complained that cricket was preventing him from seeing his family. Not for long, Steve. Not for long.

You do wonder quite what Harmison will do when his playing career finishes. I suspect he’ll struggle to find another job which pays him £300,000 a year for about a dozen weeks’ work.

I also wonder if he has the humility to reflect on how insensitive his words were. There at, right now, tens of thousands of young men and women serving their country in a less glamorous but somewhat more meaningful way in Afghanistan and Iraq. They don’t have benefit seasons and sponsorship deals. They don’t get to see their families.  

I don’t doubt Harmison tries his best every time he steps on to the pitch. But I do doubt that he cares enough to prepare properly. The first Test against New Zealand was hardly the first time he’s gone into a series ill-prepared. One way or another, it has to be the last.

To some extent, however, Harmison is a victim. Like a spoiled child, he has been ruined by excess. He’s had too much freedom, too much coaching and too much money. He’s lost his hunger.

Harmison’s – and Matthew Hoggard’s – lack of form in the first Test in New Zealand also reflects poorly on Peter Moores. To have two key players start a Test series short of match-fitness – again – is simply unprofessional. Moores should have ensured it didn’t happen.

Moores has been a great disappointment. While no-one is yet likely to shout ‘bring back Fletcher’, it does look as if Moores could be cricket’s version of Steve McClaren. Indeed, one wonders just how different Moores’ career might have been had he never met Mushtaq Ahmed. As different, perhaps, as Ringo Starr’s had he not met Lennon and McCartney.

Harmison is just the worst manifestation of a general malaise affecting the England team. Despite the millions spent on salaries, facilities, and a massive backroom staff, they’ve nearly all become worse cricketers. Harmison and James Anderson have both lost at least 5mph of their pace. Andrew Strauss hasn’t scored a century (at time of writing) since the dawn of time. And that’s before considering the likes of Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick, whose international careers were screwed up by a succession of coaches, managers and selectors. 

A long-term solution will require a culture change. Players need to forget about failure and simply give expression to their natural talents. A coach with the ability to inspire as well as offer technical advice is required. Step forward, Dermot Reeve?

But practical steps can be made now. For a start, tours need to be longer. If the players don’t like it they can become electricians. And yes, England players also need to play more county cricket. There are very few things in life at which we improve by doing less often and England’s cricketers have proved once and for all that a lack of match practice does not make perfect.