By John Plummer
Thursday, August 2, 2001

Eight years ago John Harmer started remoulding a bedraggled Australian team. He ended up steering them to two World Cup finals and one winner's podium.

He has recently accepted a similar challenge with England and, after just a day spent with the shellshocked players at the end of the Ashes series, was already bullish about the prospects of a repeat performance.

Harmer believes that his young lionesses can match the world champions New Zealand who tour next year. This is some call given that Clare Connor's team has just been cuffed by the Aussies: 3-0 in the one-dayers and 2-0 in the Tests. He is hastily arranging a tour to India this winter so that the players don't have a year to brood on their rotten results. "The quicker we get them playing at that level the quicker they will improve," he reasons.

His immediate aim is to instill aggression. Too often this year, crease occupation appeared the summit of batting ambition.

"I keep telling them 'if you bat like skittles, you get knocked over,'" says Harmer. "At some stage they have to jump out of their defensive mould and take the bowler on. It was a similar problem when I began with Australia. I said it's boring to watch and it's boring to play."

Strength, he insists, isn't an issue. "They have enough bat speed to hit fours. It's just a case of being prepared to let go in the mind." Fitness, however, is. "We've got to raise levels through individual conditioning programmes. I also envisage holding camps for players and coaches so that everybody is working to the same philosophy."

A new philosophy, by the sound of it. "Everything should work in a pyramid. We have a very flat pyramid in the domestic game at the moment and the level at the top is all too mediocre."

Harmer has already introduced the players to biomechanics, which he describes as "understanding the way the body moves and why it moves the way it does". His first training session featured players trying to balance a bat on their fingers to encourage them to think of it as an extension of the arm.

Connor says: "He spoke for an hour and we sat there enthralled. The girls are very excited, his arrival couldn't have happened at a better time."

Injury to Charlotte Edwards will hamper the rebuilding of England's brittle top order. Harmer sums up her value to the side while simultaneously managing a sly put-down of his old charges.

"She is capable of making 70 against any attack in the world and nursing others along. The top three batters in Australia are very good players but the rest aren't as good as people think. Lucy Broadfoot is no better than the England players but with Rolton nursing her at the other end on her way 200 she was able to make 71."

Harmer, 59, is like a jollier Duncan Fletcher; he doesn't say much but clarity and warmth permeate each sentence. Isn't he worried that so much is expected? "No," he says. "I don't see myself as having a reputation. I just see myself as a guy who enjoys cricket." After the briefest pause he adds: "But if I have to justify the things I'm doing then I think I can."

John Plummer is deputy editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly

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