Swervy
International Captain
as I say, not a lot of people subscribe to my point of view on this type of thing.I hate this argument. The series was not lost from that ball at all. If he Harmy goes back to his mark and bowls the rest of the over straight and managed an early wicket, the wide would have been seen just as a loosener.
The fact is Harmsion is such a confidence bowler, he needs to be mentally right to bowl well more than any bowler I have seen play for England ever. If he had got the ball right on the money, he would have been lifted and bowled better, which COULD have led onto a good start for England etc etc, and who knows what would have happened then.
As I say, Harmsion needs to be bang on mentally to perform. The high risk part of it was there has probably never been a more highly anticipated delivery to start any test series in the history of the Ashes. Everyone was watching it. Fletcher knew it, Flintoff knew it, and worst of all Harmison knew it, and he bottled it.
Hoggard would have been the best bet to take the first ball by far, because he can take that pressure.
Of course it is easy to say in hindsight, but at the time I though it was high risk