“They just said that I’ll open in the first game and we’re not really sure what’s going to happen with the second game. So I don’t know if that was the plan”
Marcus Harris on the communication from the selectors
Harris was asked after play on day two whether he felt he had done enough to earn a call-up and he was typically pragmatic about it. “I don’t know, it’s a good question,” he said. “I think, externally obviously this game was getting built up a lot, which is fair enough. I feel like I’ve been batting well, but so have lots of other people.
“So if I get called upon I feel like I’m ready to go, and if I don’t, then so be it. I feel pretty well-equipped. I think maybe if I was in this position 12 months ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to perform the way I have at the start of this season. My results last year probably said that. So I’ve been proud of that.”
“They just said that I’ll open in the first game and we’re not really sure what’s going to happen with the second game,” Harris said. “So I don’t know if that was the plan.”
Harris said the second game had provided a few more clues on the selectors’ thoughts but he was not reading too much into it given his previous experiences with Australia A and Prime Minister’s XI selection.
“It was probably pretty obvious what was happening,” Harris said. “You’d have to ask them, to be honest. You never know. Like last year, for example, we had the bat-off in Canberra, and they picked Renners [Matt Renshaw] who was batting at three. So, yeah, I don’t know.”
“No, honestly, it hasn’t,” Harris said. “I think this time I’ve probably embraced it a little bit more than what I have before. I think in the past I’ve probably tried to really try to avoid it. That probably builds it up a little bit more, whereas this time, I’ve probably just taken it as it’s come at me and accepted it for what it is. I think I might have said maybe a couple weeks ago at the Junction Oval, I could probably write all the articles that are going to be written in the next couple of weeks. So none of the stuff that comes out is surprising, which, I think, anytime you go through things more often, you get more used to it, more equipped to deal with it. I’m probably just more experienced at it.”
“If the wicket’s doing a little bit, [he said] you don’t always have to look to hit it for four, look to hit it for two. And it was just something simple that sort of resonated with me a little bit,” Harris said. “I think a lot of the times when you do well on wickets like that, you actually spend a lot of time down the other end.”
Harris did note he needed some luck, having played and missed a lot and edged one short of the wicketkeeper on the opening night. He also had a huge slice of luck when he was given not out on 48 – he tried to turn offspinner Tanush Kotian to the leg side and the ball deflected to slip. India A were convinced it came off the edge but the umpire thought it was pad.
“I hit my pad on the way through,” Harris said. “Hence why I stood my ground. Then the umpire gave it not out, so I was like, I don’t know. But then we watched the replay and I think the boys said they watched it 20 times and you couldn’t really tell. So the god’s honest truth was I wasn’t sure. But if they reviewed it and said you’d hit it and got caught, I would have [thought] fair enough.
“It just went my way.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
