Older and wiser, Ryan Harris looks back at his career, the injuries he overcame along the way, and the art of swinging it

Interview by Daniel Brettig17-Mar-2015Some of the most fascinating passages in your new book are about the earlier days, before the success arrived. When you went back and looked over those early days, what lessons did you take away?
Certainly how much I’ve matured, how much harder I’ve trained and how much better I’ve looked after myself as I’ve gotten older. How I’ve dealt with injury as well. Some of the injuries I’ve had, people in the medical profession have questioned whether I’d be done, so there’s determination as well. The way I bowl, years ago I didn’t expect to play Test cricket for Australia. So to see where I’ve come from, it’s a good achievement, to show the amount I’ve had to work to get there. I’ve surprised myself, in a way.What would Ryan Harris of 2015 say to Ryan Harris of say 2003?
Apply yourself a bit more, and believe in yourself. Train harder. Once I had that stronger belief, that’s when I started playing well and belonged at first-class level. Just to apply myself a bit more would have been better. You always wish you can go back and change things, but in the end I don’t regret it, it’s part of growing up.You evolved a lot as a bowler in South Australia. You started to learn about yourself and started to flourish before you left there, but was there anything about SA or Adelaide that meant it took a little longer for that to happen?
Not really. Something just clicked in my bowling action, I started bowling a bit quicker, started taking wickets. I got to the stage where I was on the verge again and almost lost my contract, two and a half years before I left. I had a good pre-season and did my knee in the first grade game and then had a longer time out of the game than I should have had. Then I sat down with Wayne Phillips, who was SA coach at the time, and he said, “Look mate, you’ve got to decide what you want to do”, so I came back, trained hard again and got back to bowl at good pace and started taking lots of wickets. Once I got through that injury I bowled as well as I ever had and things started to run for me, so that was probably the belief starting to show. That’s probably when it turned around.Something Graham Manou told me about the 2009 Ashes tour was how different it was being in the Australian side versus South Australia in terms of the attitude to defeat. It was “How did we lose that, we can’t be losing games” rather than “Oh well, we’re not good enough again.”
I don’t know what it was with the South Australian team because at the time I was around the team we had a good side. But it was just finding ways to win games. We didn’t know how to do it. In Queensland it struck me when I moved here how much fighting spirit they had. We won games from where we shouldn’t have – the Queensland boys just had that determination never to give up. That was similar to what I found with the Australian side and the mentality they had. Whereas SA, we just didn’t seem to believe we could do it in certain positions in games. With the side we had – Lehmann, Blewett, Gillespie, David Fitzgerald, Ben Johnson, Brad Young, Paul Rofe, we had a really good side, but just not enough to win things. In the whole eight years, I think we finished fourth once, very close to the Shield final but never got there. And years later they still haven’t.

“I know when I left South Australia, Ian McLachlan said it wasn’t a big loss, I only took 37 wickets. Whether or not they were happy to see me go, who cares. History shows it was probably a mistake for them”

Around the time you moved to Queensland there was this whisper campaign along the lines of: we need to move Ryan because we need to change the culture. It looks an outlandish claim now.
The culture at the time wasn’t too bad. We were starting to win and I was starting to take wickets. I never really knew about that. I know when I left, Ian McLachlan [then SACA president] said it wasn’t a big loss, I only took 37 wickets. Whether or not they were happy to see me go, who cares. History shows it was probably a mistake for them, like it has been every time they seem to establish a team and get good players, then let them go because of some sort of dispute – like Michael Klinger or Mark Cosgrove. At the time I felt there was an issue with Northern Districts players because they let me go, they let Graham go, they let Darren go, and they let Cossie go. But it was just coincidental.You dealt with Darren Lehmann at Northern Districts, South Australia, Queensland and then Australia. You’ve had him in your professional and personal life over a long period. What have you seen change or grow in him?
To be honest, he hasn’t changed. He’s still the same sort of guy as coach that he was as captain. He’s honest and to the point, he’ll tell you if you’re doing something wrong, tell you if you’re doing something right. The Northern Districts boys used to love him going out there and making sure he’d have a beer afterwards. He’d buy them a carton and sit in the rooms. He just loves cricket and he’ll talk about the game forever.On the personal side he’s been a mentor of mine for a long time. I spoke to him about leaving SA. He was probably the second person I told after my dad. I rang him to get his opinion. He got me over to the IPL, and I had him up here with the Bulls, and he’s been great for me and my cricket. In times when I have slackened off, he’s usually been around to kick me in the butt to get me on track.You say he hasn’t changed, but he clearly picked up a few things about coaching along the way?
He’s a great man manager as well as a great coach. But he was like that when he was playing, he’d do the same thing with the young blokes then – he gave you confidence to go out and play the way you wanted to play. If you make a mistake that’s okay, but just don’t make it again. If you keep making it over and over again, that’s when he gets shitty.One thing you shared was that you’ve both dealt with loss. You lost your mum, he lost his mum, and also David Hookes. And you spent a fair amount of time with each other in both cases.
When my mum passed away, he was the first to call in to see me. He was captain at the time and he was fantastic about it. “Go away and take as much time as you want, if you want to play cricket next week, play, if you don’t, you don’t. You do what you’ve got to do.” He was always there ringing me, a good shoulder to lean on, and as a mentor and close mate he was great through that time. Even now with anniversaries, he seems to remember when it happened. I’m a bit sketchy on when his anniversary is but he always seems to remember my mum, there’s always a message. He’s fantastic in that way.With bowling coach Allister de Winter in the nets: “The wrist snap was just a part of my action that started to click”•Getty ImagesOne thing about your career is, it spans a lot of changes to the domestic structure. You arrived when there were a lot of older players around, then a big group left the game in a short space of time, before the Futures League caused a few more to go. How do you look at the Shield now versus when you began?
The Futures League was a mistake from the start. You had a lot of contracted players who were sitting around, not allowed to play 2nd XI cricket like they used to do, and missing out. So guys were thinking, “Well, I can’t rely on grade cricket each week” because guys performing in grade cricket weren’t getting picked in 2nd XI because of the age restrictions, so they’re like, “What’s the point, I might as well go get a full-time job.” These guys were on 40 to 60k, which is okay money, but if you’ve got a trade, you could be earning twice that money, I think that’s why we lost a lot of guys. My theory on that a long time ago was that if the young players were good enough and earning a pot, they’d play anyway, but the competition went down because of that. It took probably three years too long to realise that.The times I as growing up playing 2nd XI cricket, I was playing games against teams then that could have been second 1st teams now, playing as additional states – they were that good. I don’t think there’s enough of that these days. It’s funny because after the big u-turn they did, the Australian Cricketers Association and Cricket Australia now are trying to get more older players back in the game.You and Mitchell Johnson are now the 30-something fast bowlers with a lot of younger guys around you. How have you found Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, James Pattinson, Josh Hazlewood and others to deal with? Can you sense the generation gap?
I’ve spent a lot of time with them and they love the game and love talking about it. They ask for advice and love learning, so that part of it is covered. None of them are “I know what I’m doing, I know the game.” They respect the game for what it is and where they’re at. They’re always trying to learn, trying to bowl six balls in the right spot rather than four and all that sort of stuff. It’s important to get young guys talking about the game and they do that a lot, which is great.A lot of people have marvelled at your strong wrist, how it snaps over and sends the ball down with perfect backspin and seam position. How did that develop?
I’ve got nothing for you there, that just happened. I didn’t even know when that started, whether it started in Adelaide or up in Brisbane. I remember watching replays at some stage and seeing that wrist snap back, and to me it feels like it’s straight up and down. I don’t feel it go back. That was just a part of my action that started to click. It started happening and I got my wrist behind the ball. I always swung it. When I was younger and a bit slower, I could always swing it both ways.How did you pick up reverse swing? Even now it can be elusive for Australia.
I used to love bowling in Adelaide because of that. There’s different theories on it. You try to keep the ball as dry as possible. I’ve learned a little bit being in the Aussie side. We might let the ball go completely, not touch it up or anything like that, which I’d never done before, and once one side goes really bad, you start working on the other side and that works as well. All in all, it’s keeping one side smooth and trying to rough the other one up. Everyone does it these days – throw it into the ground or into the wicket when the keeper runs back. If that doesn’t work, you can go the old-fashioned theory, and that’s load it up one side, wet one side and make it heavier.

“I never thought I’d play Test cricket. If anything I thought I’d play one-day cricket or T20s, but to be able to do that at Test level and sit now where I am, it’s a good feeling”

Have you spoken much over your career to bowlers from other countries about how they did it?
No, because they keep their secrets! Usually in Australia you go for reverse when the ball is a bit softer. But if you can get it going while the ball’s hard, it’s a lot more effective and a lot harder to play, because you get that bounce and zip off the wicket, which doesn’t happen very often. It’s only really happened once in my career in the Shield final in Hobart in the second innings. The ball started reversing after about five overs. It hit the right side enough times and reversed. We had Tasmania 5 for 15, so it’s tough to play.Looking over your Australia career, what do you cherish most? Perhaps apart from your debut.
Winning the Ashes was pretty good, then going to South Africa and winning again was a big few months for us. We played good cricket here, but we spoke about the biggest challenge being to play cricket away from home and winning, and we did that against the best side in the world at the time. That period there was pretty special, but the debut as well. I never thought I’d play Test cricket. If anything I thought I’d play one-day cricket or T20s, but to be able to do that at Test level and sit now where I am, it’s a good feeling.It is a year on from the summer of 2013-14. Does that distance allow you to look on it and work out why it operated so perfectly?
The change of personnel helped. When Darren took over it was a bit of a weight off a few guys’ shoulders and they started to enjoy playing cricket again. Before that they didn’t seem to be doing that, and the way Darren’s handled the team, and also Michael, they’ve done really well. They’ve got us playing positive and entertaining cricket. We were close in England, we knew we were growing close as a team, so if we could come back to our backyard in our conditions, we had a big chance. We hit them pretty hard and they weren’t expecting that at all.In your time in the Australian side the only time you’ve been dropped was from the one-day team in early 2012. Can you remember that, and was it an issue of, like you said, enjoyment or being over-anxious abut your spot?
Exactly that: I tried too hard. I had been injured and out of the one-day team and then wanted so badly to get back in, I tried to bowl too fast and got pumped all over the place. I remember playing India and being quite anxious on the ground, and that was a big lesson to me. I was worrying about my spot, and I never worried about that before. It was how I got to where I did, just bowling and taking wickets. I tried so hard to get back into the team then, I tried so hard I got myself out of it as well.I never ever worried about it before, I just played and let the ball do the talking. For once I tried too hard and I knew I’d mucked it up.Looking ahead, you’ve got a pretty detailed plan to make sure you’re ready to go in the West Indies?
I’m basically doing a pre-season. The opportunity is there to do what I did leading into England in 2013, that was identified as the way to do it. It was a very similar time frame, and every time I bowl now, I’m using up balls that I won’t be able to bowl again, so the decision was made that I wouldn’t play Shield cricket to play another Ashes series for Australia. It’s disappointing not being able to play, but the thought of going to England again one more time and having a crack at the Ashes was something I couldn’t argue with.Cooking with Michael Clarke at a fan event: “Darren and Michael have got us playing positive and entertaining cricket”•Getty ImagesI know the lead-up I had to 2013 was spot-on and when they sat down and said, “We’re going to do what we did last time”, I couldn’t argue because it got me through nine Tests. I didn’t have a very good build-up into the India series after knee surgery, I wasn’t fit enough. At first it was disappointing because a World Cup was there potentially, but I can’t argue with it.A lot of talk has been devoted to the ball that bowled Alastair Cook in the second innings in Perth last summer. Can you think of any other balls to get wickets that stick in your mind?
The one in Cape Town last year to get AB de Villiers in the second innings was a decent ball with the second new ball. Then there was one in Galle in 2011 to get Mahela Jayawardene when he was on a hundred on the last day. I worked bloody hard to get that. That Cook one was a fast bowler’s dream, what you try to do every ball. When it comes off, you look like a genius. The seam was up and it hit the seam and almost swung again afterwards. It was just a freakish ball and I’m trying to do that every time. Keep that seam up. is out now on Hardie Grant Books