Paul Harris retires

As the title says, gotta say I'm a little sad.

Whilst not being the most gifted, Paul Harris all ways gave 100% to the Proteas.

I was more than a little disappointed when Harris was axed for the undeserving Tahir.

But 103 Test wickets, including 3 x 5 wicket hauls. He did a solid job.

Always thought he was treated unfairly by the British press. He was a decent holding spinner.

He probably deserved the axe when it came, but he served the team well, particularly on the 2008 tours of England and Australia, and in the home series v England in '09-'10.

Also a strong contributor to Warwickshire (is it me, or has just about everybody played for Warks!)

Shelsey93 wrote:Always thought he was treated unfairly by the British press. He was a decent holding spinner.

He probably deserved the axe when it came, but he served the team well, particularly on the 2008 tours of England and SA, and in the home series v England in '09-'10.

Also a strong contributor to Warwickshire (is it me, or has just about everybody played for Warks!)

Tours of SA?

ShankyCricket wrote:

Shelsey93 wrote:Always thought he was treated unfairly by the British press. He was a decent holding spinner.

He probably deserved the axe when it came, but he served the team well, particularly on the 2008 tours of England and SA, and in the home series v England in '09-'10.

Also a strong contributor to Warwickshire (is it me, or has just about everybody played for Warks!)

Tours of SA?

Seems a lot of Saffas have played for Warks. Anton Ferreira played there in the early 80's, Brian McMillan played a season there in 1986, followed by Allan Donald from 1989, then Shaun Pollock in 1996, Jonathan Trott from 2000 odd.

Got a nice little snippet about Harris from a former teammate:

Flooded a flat
ran up a huge cab debt
never turned up to train the kids
constantly late
drunkard
potential racist
And smoked ‘doobies’

South Africa's version of Ashley Giles - a good support act to their battery of seamers (including Kallis) who usually kept it tight, picked up the odd wicket and scored handy runs down the order with his somewhat awkward style of batting.

England got after him the last time they visited South Africa, and with Kallis's diminishing workload SA decided they needed more quality from their spin bowler (and went for... Tahir, which was a mistake, but Peterson looks a decent bowler). Just like Giles couldn't really do the job in a 4 man attack (outside the subcontinent anyway) the same goes for Harris, and I think he was dropped at the right time personally. Teams would have followed the England blueprint and got after him.

Always came accross as a nice enough guy though, and certainly did his job when asked.

A solid contributer to SA over the years. No world beater, but a decent international cricketer.
All the best to his post playing life.