SJS said:
Well for all that you keep doing day in and day out 10 minutes is a short time indeed.
Well I concede he is the best bowler in England at present but about 47 bowlers in the world could be called that if they chose to play for England.
Tuffey doesnt.
And if he did, he wouldn't be the best bowler in the England side.
I seem to be the one most at risk of calling Harmison a great bowler, so perhaps I should explain my view and how I got there.
I have found it hilarious that there are people who will calmly say that McGrath is a great bowler and Harmison hasn't got the potential. I saw McGrath bowl in 1994-95 and remember thinking that if that's all Australia had to replace Craig McDermott with, the 1997 Ashes would be a doddle. He was dreadful then, certainly as bad as Harmison was to start with.
And so I had a look at the cumulative averages compared of the two bowlers, and was very surprised to find that even as far as their 12th Tests, they were pretty even - before the WI series had even started. Then Harmison exploded into life, and his figures are now superior to McGrath's.
The other evening, provoked by the huge stripey horse, I dug out the stats for a whole load of bowlers, and was even more surprised by what I found.
The three bowlers who came top of the list were all supernovae, Tyson the most spectacular, but neither Botham nor Gillespie went on to match what they achieved in their first two-three years of Test cricket.
Harmison has followed the more conventional pattern of starting bad and getting better, and I was amazed to find that he has had the best such start of any English bowler since Trueman. And that his trajectory is comparable to people like Dennis Lillee and not like Devon Malcolm.
It seems incredibly mean-minded to disparage such an achievement, given that plenty of the other names around him on that list also got their early wickets against dross sides like England, not the mighty teams they themselves played for.
And, though it displays my feeble-mindedness, I am actually rather pleased that for the first time in fifty years, England have discovered a bowler who is matching what the great bowlers of the past and present have achieved, rather than sort-of-nearly-if-you-make-some-allowances-for-all-the-dropped-catches matching them, and who will join the pantheon if he continues in the same vein.
If he achieves nothing else in his career, then the first series victory in the Caribbean for 36 years will be his Frank Tyson moment - and even that's no small thing to be in the books for.
His career figures so far include not only the WI and the Bangles, but also what he did in other matches, just as the figures recorded by the other top bowlers include wickets against both good teams and bad.
Only time will tell whether Harmison is a great bowler or a shooting star who will be burned out in another 12 months. But if he doesn't burn out, he's the first genuine candidate for bowling greatness England have had in decades.
Cheers,
Mike
