While James Harris takes no issue with the England coaches who encouraged him to remodel his action in the search for pace, the Middlesex seamer was quick to point out the career-best nine for 34 that blew away Durham on day four was not down to the porridge he ate for breakfast but a return to the bowling action he finds most natural.
Harris was the Welsh wunderkind who, in 2007, two days after his 17th birthday, claimed seven for 66 against Gloucestershire and 12 for the match in his second first-class outing for Glamorgan before being quickly absorbed into the England and Wales Cricket Board’s fast bowling programme that winter. He was tipped for great things and yet, only now, eight summers on and three years after a move to Middlesex, is it starting to come together again at the age of 24.
Jimmy Anderson, Liam Plunkett and Harris’s county team-mate Steven Finn have all had their run-ins with the ECB’s biomechanics at the national academy in Loughborough and will probably cock a knowing eyebrow at how the Swansea-born seamer decided to put the tinkering to one side and revert to what made him successful in the first place.
The result? The second-best post-war figures from a Middlesex bowler as Durham produced the second-worst championship batting performance in their history, bowled out for 71 in a 187-run defeat.
“They had been trying to change things since I was very young, both in the programmes at Loughborough and bits and bobs, because you want to bowl at 90mph-plus and swing it round corners,” said Harris, who claimed 13 for 103 in the match. “It’s what you want to do if you’re a seamer to get international batsmen out.
“It was said that if I was half a yard quicker I’d be that much closer to getting an England call-up, and that’s what we went searching for. You could argue that we probably found it but it was at the detriment to what I did naturally. I lost my height, I wasn’t hitting the seam, I wasn’t causing problems which is something I’ve always done since I was young.”
Harris’s bowling coach Richard Johnson, whose 10 for 45 against Derbyshire sits one higher in the club’s list, has been supportive of this back-to-basic approach. “He has been brilliant,” Harris said. “I’ve been through some dark days in the last two years. When I decided to go back to my old way of doing things, he was incredibly supportive and I thank him for that. We’re finally starting to get some results.”
Uphill from the Nursery End and into a strong wind, Harris certainly achieved those results on Tuesday as Durham wilted in their pursuit of 259, after 18 wickets had fallen the day before. Resuming on 24 for two – both to Harris – their batsmen had no answers to his probing off-stump line delivered above the 80mph mark, with the seam upright and nibbling.
Michael Richardson shouldered arms to a straight one to get things moving, before Calum MacLeod and Paul Collingwood were dispensed with in consecutive deliveries. By the end of the 15th over, which saw both Phil Mustard and Scott Borthwick edge to slip, Harris had taken five for five in 16 balls.
The talk of all 10 grew louder only for Finn, the last Middlesex seamer to claim nine when he demolished Worcestershire at New Road in 2010, to chip in with the wicket of Usman Arshad, caught at gully via inside edge and pad.
Harris responded next over with John Hastings lbw for a duck to leave the visitors 53 for nine and needing 11 more to surpass their all-time low of 63 on the same ground in 1996. Paul Coughlin and Chris Rushworth avoided that ignominious record with a stand of 18 to provide the only crumb of comfort for Durham.
Harris wrapped up proceedings after just 80 minutes of the morning session when he had the latter caught behind.
With 26 wickets in the championship thus far, Harris is not resting on his laurels and insists there is more to come, especially when it comes to the speed-gun. “I still think I can bowl better, I will always feel like that unless it’s all 10 for not many,” he said. “We tried to search for extra pace, but now we’re looking for it in a different way. Whether I can get 10% stronger and tweak what I do well, rather than rip apart what I do now, that’s all to come.”
