The Ashes: Selectorial amnesia

Steve Harmison was dropped from the England team because he regularly bowls pies.  His stock delivery is the long-hop.  This was in March 2008 during the tour of New Zealand.  It should have been the end of his Test career.

Nearly 18 months later, Harmison is bowling his stock ball at Australia’s batsman, who are showing their gratitude by scoring lots of runs.  At this point, I should say that England are not losing this Test just because of Harmison.  That would be because of their gutless batting.

However, the Harmison case highlights the selectorial amnesia that now strikes English selectors in early August every summer:  They see him terrorising puny county batsmen for Durham and start to wonder where this dynamic destroyer has come from.  Then they pick him in the Test side and he starts to send down utter tripe again.

One day they will learn.