Harmison: 'I tried too hard'

The first ball that Steve Harmison delivered in this Champions Trophy, with Virender Sehwag on strike and two staggered slips in place, could probably end up as the widest wide in the tournament, and maybe even in the history of one-day cricket. Had a third leg-slip been in place, the inevitable five wides might have just been averted.

It's not the first time Harmison has launched a winter tour in such erratic fashion. In his first spell of the previous Ashes tour in 2002-03, Harmison sent down seven wides in a row in a warm-up match at Lilac Hill, prompting the crowd to deliver the famous sledge - 'Heard of Harmison's website? It's wwwwwww ..." . Later, in three successive VB Series matches, Harmison sent down 23 wides in just 19 overs, returning the ignominious figures of 1 for 144.

Speaking to the press ahead of England's crucial showdown with Australia on Saturday, Harmison admitted that he'd probably tried too hard in that most recent opening over - England were defending a paltry 125, and Harmison conceded 20 of them in one go.

"I've bowled a few of them before and it just slipped down leg side after that," he admitted. "I felt confident and content the way I came back after that. I bowled a couple of pitched-up balls which obviously Sachin [Tendulkar] got through midwicket but I came back with five overs for 14. I was probably trying too hard. With only 124 on the board I went at it too hard. Maybe I lost a bit of focus rather than staying in control. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, trying to bowl really fast before getting things in control. Hopefully I've learnt from that."

Interestingly, despite stating that he was ready to bowl at any time his captain wanted, Harmison also hinted that, under different circumstances, he might not have opened the attack against India. "The brand-new white ball is a bit difficult to grip but that's my job. I haven't done it well in the last six to seven months but I've been working hard in the last three or four days to try and do that.

"I'm confident that I'm pretty close to doing that. At the end of the day, I wasn't sure what was happening [in the previous game], wasn't sure of the plans. Because we had a small total to defend, I bowled up front. But I've to wait and see what happens this Saturday.

"I felt as if I've let myself down," Harmison added. "I've been around a while and have been a little bit more experienced than a few others. I probably should have reined it in a little bit rather than go all guns blazing and try and blast them out from ball one. It would have been nice to start off by conceding two or three off the first over and then gone at them later on, maybe second, third over might have been better.

"But it's an easy thing to say and you just got to learn from that. It was an eagerness to do well, I haven't bowled for a while, that's no excuse. I thought that was it, we had 125 on the board and didn't have much to play with. The way to go about it was to get early wickets. We did get an early wicket but it cost us 20 runs."

For someone relying primarily on the bounce off the track, Harmison needs to adjust to the two-paced tracks that teams are confronting in this tournament. His first target, he revealed, was to get it as straight as possible, hitting the deck as hard as he could.

"At my height, you can bowl a little bit shorter. [I was] just talking about the unevenness of the pitch that we played on and it was a bit up and down. The ball that got Sachin out, on a true pitch it would have hit him waist high. But it caught him at the top of the ankle. So I probably need to hit the deck as hard as I can."