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With the Ashes neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas, it’s time to assess Australia’s stocks moving forward.
And no stock is more important to the national team than Ryan Harris.
While Mitchell Johnson and his moustache might be grabbing all the headlines and Man-of-the-Match awards, Harris has quietly picked up 12 wickets at an average of just over 23.
While these figures are excellent, the fact they are actually slightly worse than Harris’ career average of 22.45 shows you just how deadly the Queenslander is at Test level.
Given Melbourne and Sydney are now dead rubbers, and with a tour of South Africa on the horizon, the temptation is there to rest Harris for at least one of the home Tests.
With the number-one ranked Proteas certain to provide stiffer opposition than the Poms have this summer, the inclusion of Harris and his wicket-taking ability will be essential to breaking Smith, Amla, De Villiers, Kallis and company.
The fact that Harris has played all three Tests this summer – not to mention a run of seven consecutive Tests since the Lord’s match – is something of a miracle given his injury history.
With a list of breakdowns as long as Shane Watson’s (alright, maybe not that long), it seems that Harris’ knee/ankle/hammy/calf giving up the ghost is a more imminent threat to our cricketing dominance than childhood obesity.
Sure enough, towards the end of the Perth Test, there were whispers that Harris was struggling with a knee injury.
At 34, Harris is fast approaching the age at which most quicks hang up their boots, and with our platoon of young fast bowlers more often injured than they are playing, it is essential we squeeze the most out of Harris before he retires.
If this means prioritising which Tests he plays in order to aim for series wins, then so be it.
But hang on, you might say, there’s a month between the Sydney Test and the South African tour, that’s plenty of time for him to recover.
And you’d be right, to a degree.
Short turnarounds between Tests have been a danger zone for Harris in the past, and with only three days between Melbourne and Sydney – and given the yards he has already put in this summer – surely the risk of him breaking down is high.
And with Australia having secured the Ashes, winning at the MCG and SCG no longer becomes as important as the South African tour. That is, if you take Michael Clarke at his word when he says Australia are aiming to regain the number one Test ranking.
Call it ‘informed player management’, call it ‘rotation’, call it whatever you want; the simple fact is Australia is a much more dangerous team with one R. Harris in it.
Of course, Australia will be loath to tinker with the unchanged line-up that has given them such success and harmony this summer, but they need to look at the bigger picture.
So please, Inverarity and colleagues, look towards South Africa and give our match-winner the rest he deserves in either Melbourne or Sydney.
You run the risk of short-term pain against England, but surely the greater risk is pushing Harris too far and not having him on the plane in February?
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