Quote:On his best days, Steve Harmison was more than a handful. Bequeathed many of the gifts almost every fast bowler would pick were they asked to choose from a menu, the Durham man was often a frightening prospect.

He was quick, capable of propelling a cricket ball at a foreboding velocity.


Standing at 6ft 5ins, he elicited steep bounce from all but the most docile pitches, and his Cricinfo profile refers to his “painful capacity for jamming fingers against bat-handles”.

Few bowlers could be as devastating as Harmison. Had he possessed the wherewithal to operate at, or even close to, his optimum capability for extended periods, he’d have constructed a statistical edifice comparable to those of Malcolm Marshall, Dennis Lillee and Curtly Ambrose. Sadly, for England, for cricket fans in general, and for the bowler himself, he was never able to shine brightly for too long. Renowned as a troublesome traveller, he was the subject of endless conversations in cricket circles: would he ever overcome the fragility that plagued him and grow into one of the best bowlers of his time?

It is generally accepted that Harmison ended his playing days as one of cricket’s great unfulfilled talents. And yet it would be unfair to off-handedly label him an underachiever. What was not widely known at the time is that he was plagued by depression so crippling that only sporadically did it allow his talent to burst through.  Were his true ailment revealed then, it would likely be taken as evidence of weakness, especially unbecoming of an uncompromising fast man trading in pace and intimidation.