Paul Harris bowls left-arm spin, but he has the attitude and aggression of a pace bowler. Born in Harare when it was Salisbury more than 31 summers back, he has established himself in three short years as South Africa’s premier spinner, even if his figures make for fairly modest reading.
In 27 Tests since his debut against India at Cape Town in January 2007, Harris has taken 82 wickets at 33.64, not numbers that will set the world afire but more than effective in doing a restrictive role and bowling long spells to allow the quicker bowlers enough rest between destructive bursts.
Harris is quite proud of being labeled aggressive even as he launches into a self-deprecatory description of his bowling. “That’s a necessity,” he begins. “I don’t have doosras, I don’t have miracle carrom balls, I’m not a miracle bowler, I’m just a steady left-arm spinner. You have to have something else to your self. I’m pretty chilled and relaxed when I’m not bowling, but for some reason, when I get the ball in my hands, I’m not afraid of hard work. All good spinners around the world have some aggression in them. You can’t bounce batsmen out, but you have to be cleverer than the seamers and talk them out once in a while.”
The ‘chip on the shoulder’ reference brings forth a hearty chuckle. “Not at all,” he manages once he has settled down. “It’s something I enjoy, it’s a strategic chip on the shoulder! When I toured Australia (in 2008-09), I copped a bit, but when I left, they took their hats off and said I wasn’t as bad as they thought. Maybe it’s a strategy. Maybe a quarter piece of wood on the shoulder, but it’s more a strategy.”
These days of near non-stop and highly competitive, high-stakes cricket has reduced players to automatons, but Harris is something of a character. “I suppose I may be a bit eccentric,” he concedes. “Off the field, I’m pretty relaxed, I’ve brought my surfing DVDs, and I like to get in the water now and then. There’s not many waves in Nagpur, they may be a few heat waves but that’s about it! I’ve a character, it’s been part of my make-up since I was small. There are a few characters in our team -- there’s a young fella called Mark Boucher who’s a bit of a character! I’m probably one of the main ones.”
Particularly for a spinner, Harris points out, bluff is a huge weapon to possess. “Perception is reality in the world, and most spinners are like that,” he observes in a rare moment of seriousness. “We get wickets from what batsmen think the ball is going to do rather than from what the ball actually does. Murali did it for years, Warnie did it as a pastime. He had a great leggie and a slider, he lost his flipper towards the end of his career but most of his wickets were through perception. Batsmen were seeing balls going around corners when it wasn’t necessarily so. He was a master at it and that’s a gift.
“That’s probably the biggest part of spin bowling, apart from being accurate. That’s a lot of what’s happened to me. People have perceived me as not being a very good bowler, and they may have been shocked. Perception is reality, and maybe I can get a few of the Indians to believe that I’m either brilliant or useless!”
Which brings us to the topic of criticism, which he has copped a fair bit. “I’m the type of character that it spurs me on,” Harris says, enthusiastically. “I’ve had it all my career, I’ve had it growing up. I didn’t go to the most prestigious school in the world, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the most prestigious school in the world. I had to play five years of amateur cricket, I had to wait till 29 when I played my first Test match. It doesn’t bother me that much, it actually helps me. People think I’m not going to do anything and I’m not good enough, so it takes the pressure off. But I hope those people are here at the end of the series if I’ve taken a few wickets.”
Harris was in India in 2008 when the three-Test series ended 1-1, so he has experienced the pressures of bowling to India’s batsmen in their own backyard. “I’ve been around for three years now and no one has expected anything out of me,” he offers, reverting to form. “Everyone thinks I’m rubbish. I keep going to every tour and everyone thinks I am useless and I keep getting wickets on most tours, so you know. They can say there’s more pressure on me, but as long as I’m getting wickets, I don’t care what people say about me.
“I suppose there’s more pressure on me in India but that’s why you play cricket. I don’t think Indian wickets turn as much as they used to, they’ve gotten flatter. Sometimes, the South African mentality is you have to be like Indian spinners and spin through a side, but that’s quite hard work. I’ve always wanted to have another shot at India in India, it’s the Mecca of spin bowling. You never know what could happen. We’ve got our gun fast bowlers who bowl quick and scare the life out of batsmen. It’s my job to make sure they can rest when it’s not turning; when it turns, I can come into the game. Maybe I’ll shock a few people again.”
Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But he surely will entertain, no matter what.
R Kaushik