Veteran Harmison ready to stand alone

Die with your boots on: Steve Harmison gets ready to return to the Test fray © Getty Images

And then there was one. England's four-pronged pace quartet, the same awesome foursome that briefly threatened to rule the world last summer, has dwindled away almost to vanishing point. Simon Jones is crocked, seemingly for evermore; Andrew Flintoff is itching to return to the fray but is wisely being held back by a cautious management; while Matthew Hoggard's hand injury at Canterbury is quite simply the final straw.

All of which leaves England's express bowling fortunes in the hands of one diffident character - Steve Harmison, whose mercurial performances in the recent five-match one-day series gave absolutely no indication as to which of his many personae will turn out at Lord's on Thursday morning.

Harmison is a simple soul, which makes him a deeply complex sportsman. He looks like he wouldn't hurt a fly, yet bowls as if he's out to decapitate every batsman in his eyeline. He was England's most menacing weapon in last month's 5-0 trouncing against Sri Lanka, yet was dispatched for an eye-watering - and record-breaking - 97 runs in a single ten-over spell at Headingley. And he enters this match with just 32 first-class overs under his belt this season.

"I'm not going to bullshit, I didn't bowl as well as I could do," he said candidly of his one-day excursions. "I wasn't consistent in anything - lines, lengths, spells - I just didn't perform. I did feel a bit rusty, but I've got no excuses, just like you can't have any excuses about injuries. You've got to draw a line somewhere."

"Injuries are a part of sport, whatever sport you play," he added. "The best teams adapt well to injuries, so we need to stop making excuses." All the same, Harmison's familiar gait - tall yet apologetically stooped - belies the fact that he is making his own comeback to Test cricket, having missed England's last four matches because of a shin problem. And he is aware that a change in the dressing-room atmosphere has taken place in the time he has been away.

"The body language has not been great in last couple of weeks," he admitted. "We need to set out a marker and get back to being focussed and aggressive. We need to walk out there, ten foot tall, thinking: 'We're better than Pakistan'."

A bit of old-school aggression, the like of which Harmison demonstrated so memorably on his last Test appearance at Lord's, would no doubt help the cause. When the match gets underway on Thursday, it will be almost 12 months to the week since he rampaged through Australia's batting line-up on the first morning of the 2005 Ashes. He returned figures of 5 for 43 in 11.2 overs, not to mention two painful blows to Justin Langer's elbow and Ricky Ponting's cheek. They couldn't win the match but they certainly helped win the war.

And yet, Harmison reiterated what he said back then: he doesn't even like bowling at Lord's. "I've never ever enjoyed it here," he insisted, "but I always take wickets. It's not that I don't like the ground, I just don't feel comfortable, even during the Ashes. It's probably something to do with the slope, but when I'm running in, I'm not 100% convinced of my rhythm."

The doubts have never been far from the surface of Harmison's psyche - from the moment he lost his run-up in the 2002-03 Perth Test to his ignominious performances in South Africa two winters ago, shortly after he had officially been ranked as the No. 1 bowler in the world. But, all the same, he seemed relaxed about the challenge that awaits him in the coming week.

"I've got no point to prove," he stressed. "None whatsoever. If I take wickets great, but if I don't then - as long as we win - I'm not bothered. As long as I do a job for the team, I'm never bothered. The one thing we haven't been doing in recent times is nailing Test matches, but I've done a lot of practice, I've bowled nigh on 50 overs in the one-dayers, and I feel strong and fit. We'll do whatever it takes to get 20 wickets."

For all his talk of moving on from England's injury problems, however, Harmison couldn't deny that one man's absence would take quite some glossing-over. "There are people in this team that can be replaced," he said. "I can be replaced, everyone else can be replaced. But at this moment in time Andrew Flintoff can't be replaced, because no-one in the country can bat at six, bowl 90mph and stand at slip as well. It took 25 years to replace Beefy [Botham], and now we've got Fred. Without him, my job changes because he's a massive player."

Harmison and Flintoff have been bosom buddies ever since their days of Under-19 cricket, with Flintoff instrumental in helping his team-mate overcome his much-publicised bouts of homesickness. But Harmison insisted that, on a personal level, he would not feel out on a limb without his regular companion alongside him.

"I've got a lot of friends in that dressing-room," he explained. "We're not inseparable, we don't sit in this corner and the other nine in that. But ask the players who played with Beefy in mid-1980s - if you take him out of the team, you can't see England being the same team.

"We've just got to go with what we've got," Harmison continued. "This is a good England side led by Andrew Strauss, and it's going to be a good challenge. You can talk about the Ashes and what went on last year, but somewhere you need to draw a line and build for next campaign. These guys have done well to get to international level, and this is a big opportunity to nail [their places].

"But," he concluded, "you can't replace Fred."