 It has been a nightmare year: Harmison
18th Nov 2007 19:02 IST
Agencies
''I bust a gut to try to get my wrist position and my approach to the crease just right because when everything is in place the bowling clicks naturally. But maybe in the past sometimes I've tried too hard to bowl line and length at the expense of my real weapons; pace and bounce.
On his Ashes fiasco the Englishman said, ''What do I recall of that day, of that delivery? ''To be totally honest, even now it is all a massive blur.'' ''I said at the time that I felt I had frozen, that I had let the importance of the occasion get to me. On reflection, I think I need to clarify that,'' he said.
''Two things happened. The first was purely technical; I came out of my action too soon and let the ball go before the body was ready to release it, and when that happens the result is horrendous.
''Brett Lee did the same thing in the second Test in Adelaide, the ball ended up going between first and second slip and no one took a blind bit of notice. Mine being the first ball, obviously it went down as one of The Ashes moments.
''The second element was to do with the impact I was trying to make. Twenty four hours earlier we had all been pumped up with optimism; we were going to get across them and give them a good game.''
''There had been a lot of talk in the papers about how my first spell in the first Test of the 2005 Ashes had set the tone for that series. In the end, I might just have been trying too hard for the big effort ball, the one to put down the same kind of marker this time round,'' he added.
Harmison also said that the advice of Allan Donald, who was a bowling consultant with England in the summer, was also extremely helpful.
''One thing Allan Donald said to me when he was bowling coach has really hit home, and it was that however I was bowling I had to make sure I was bowling quick.
''My approach now is not to worry if the ball occasionally comes out sideways. If that happens, it happens,'' he opined. |
