Deciders, digging in, destiny: Harris back for the long game

It’s a cool, overcast Boxing Day in Melbourne and a battered England side is seeking redemption against the dominant Australians on a green, seam-friendly pitch.

Cricket fans don’t need a long memory to recall this being the ominous preview to the MCG Test two months ago. But how many recall a near identical scene presenting for the corresponding Ashes contest at the ‘G four years earlier?

Marcus Harris certainly does. In that 2021 Test, Harris, one game away from being dropped, scored a match-high 76 at his adopted home ground. His 189 balls faced were more than double the next highest from either team. Scott Boland’s debut heroics aside, the opener had the biggest impact on Australia’s series-clinching innings win.

For the more recent Melbourne Test, Harris was horizontal on his couch, recovering from back surgery. As the 33-year-old now nears a return from the keyhole operation that shaved part of his spinal disc off the nerve it was pinching, it is put to him that the difference between the 2025 MCG Test, which saw the ground’s pitch receive an extraordinary degree of ensuing scrutiny, and the 2021 MCG Test, which didn’t, might have been Harris himself.

Where the more recent match finished in the second day’s final session, Harris’ four-and-a-half hour knock in the ’21 match ensured England’s doomed second innings at least limped into the third morning. The ’25 Test finished in 142 overs; the ’21 Test ended in 180.4 overs. Take Harris’ innings out of it and the gap shrinks to just 39 balls.

“It’s hard to compare with four years difference,” Harris says. “I honestly don’t know. I know how I would have wanted to play if I was playing in that (more recent) game, just through my experience and knowing what’s worked for me at the MCG.

“But whether or not that would have worked, I couldn’t tell you. It could have maybe taken someone to dig in and try to do that. I know the MCC and Cricket Australia probably would have made a bit more money if they had!”

Harris’ first match in three months comes this weekend, for the second day of his club team St Kilda’s clash with Ringwood at the Junction Oval, which he hopes will preface a Sheffield Shield comeback. And while the door is of course not shut on him at the level beyond that, there is a lingering question that perhaps needs to be restated: are those skills Harris exhibited in his penultimate Test still in demand?

In the aftermath of Australia’s recent two-day loss in Melbourne (their only defeat for the series) fill-in captain Steve Smith indicated Harry Brook, the game’s top scorer with his helter-skelter 41 from 34 balls followed by a match-sealing 18no from 22, might have provided the blueprint for how to bat on a seaming pitch.

“I think the guy with the most success on that wicket was probably Harry Brook, running down the wicket, playing some kind of rogue shots, I suppose, and trying to get the bowlers off their lengths that way,” said Smith.

“Whether we could have been a bit more proactive potentially and played a few more of those, that’s something we’ll talk about.”

In short, Australia could have considered batting even more aggressively than they had in a Test that saw them bowled out in 45.2 overs in their first innings and 34.3 overs in their second.

Harris views it a little differently.

“I sort of feel like we got dragged into how the English have played at times,” he says. “I think when we played really well throughout the series, we just played our way. Yes, it was aggressive at times – you look at ‘Heady’ (Travis Head) in Perth – but if you think about Adelaide and Brisbane and Sydney, we ground them down, earnt the right in a pretty traditional sort of way.

“But with the modern game and the way that it moves, all it takes is a couple of senior guys to say, ‘This wicket is really hard’, and that we should get after them a little bit – and that sort of can filter through to everyone.

“It’s also easy to have an opinion how you should play from the couch. I know it’s a bit different when you’ve got 100,000 people there and all the attention on you.”

Since his Test axing in early 2022 only weeks after his MCG knock against England, Harris has become a year-round cricketer, playing consecutive county seasons for Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Lancashire. In that time, he has made more first-class runs than any Australian bar Victoria teammate Peter Handscomb.

Harris is at peace if he does not add to his 14 Tests. Undoubtedly he would need to lift his average from his past three first-class summers at home (30.88 in 2023-24, 32.76 in 2024-25 and 31.60 through six games so far in 2025-26) to return to contention anyway. His shift from taking on the new ball to now batting at No.3 for the Vics and at No.4 for Lancashire is another factor.

What also now appears a real consideration is another column on the batting spreadsheets: strike-rate. On that above list, Harris’ strike-rate sits at 50.86 – roughly halfway between Labuschagne and Khawaja (the latter having replaced Harris when he was squeezed out for the final 2021-22 Ashes Test). During the recent Ashes, Travis Head’s 629 runs came at the remarkable clip of 87.36 runs per 100 balls; his opening partner Jake Weatherald’s haul of 201 came at 69.79, just a tick higher than the 68.27 he chalked up during the ’24-25 Sheffield Shield season to earn his Test spot. 

“I know what works for me and what doesn’t,” says Harris. “I’m pretty steadfast in sticking to the way that I want to play.

“Sometimes if you can face 70 or 80 balls that’s actually doing a job for the guys a bit further down the order, rather than coming out and blasting 20 or 30 off 30 balls. I know what works for me and what doesn’t, and that might be different for someone else.

“Whatever selectors and coaches think, that’s up to them.”

Harris’ heavy first-class playing schedule since his last international appearance has taken a toll on one of Australian cricket’s otherwise more durable operators.

After flying home from the UK in September, he felt an ache in his left leg on a subsequent interstate flight for Victoria’s One-Day Cup opener. The pain, as well as the restriction on his movement both in the field and at the batting crease, grew worse despite the intervention of an injection into his spine. One morning he was unable to get out of bed to walk the few steps to his ensuite bathroom.

“It got to the point where our team doctor suggested the surgery,” he says. “I was a bit hesitant at the start – I’d never had surgery before. But then once I spoke to the surgeon and actually got my head around what he wanted to do and what the long-term looked like, it made the most sense.”

Harris hopes to be available for ladder-leading Victoria’s final three Sheffield Shield matches; two regular season games against Tasmania and South Australia, and then a home final at the Junction Oval. He has a formidable record in the Shield decider, scoring tons in wins in 2014-15 (a second-innings 158no after 81 in the first), ’16-17 (120) and ’18-19 (141). He also played in defeats in ’13-14 (for his native WA) and ’22-23 (for the Vics).

“As you get older, you appreciate how hard it is to get into that position – and you don’t take it for granted,” he says.

“The first one I played in with WA, we were so excited just to be in it, but I think we got overawed a little bit. Then those three that I’ve won with Victoria, those were really dominant teams – and we’ve almost had to start again since that last Shield final in 2018-19.

“So it’d be cool to be part of that process if we were to win it again. We started from the ground up.”

Beyond that home decider, Harris will head north again for a fifth consecutive county season. He piled on 1,027 runs at 60.41 last year for a Lancashire side that began their campaign in tumultuous fashion with their captain and coach both stepping down before the end of May. Harris filled in as skipper but now returns to play under the leadership of Test great Jimmy Anderson, who, coincidentally, dismissed him in each of his final two Tests. The Victorian is now grateful he’s sharing a changeroom with the soon-to-be 44-year-old.

“He’s an unbelievable bowler – arguably the best Test bowler ever,” Harris says, adding with a laugh: “I’ve enjoyed him spraying the opposition like he used to spray me.

“He’s brilliant around the group. Probably a little bit different to what people would expect – super friendly, happy to help guys, thinks about the game unbelievably, and tactically he’s amazing. You see when he plays all the boys feed off him.

“We had a game at Cheltenham last year against Gloucestershire, where we enforced the follow on to try and bowl them out to win (outright) and that’s when I was thinking, ‘If I’m 43 I don’t really want to be fielding for 200 overs at a school ground’. But to his credit, he’s not bothered … he’s been great to play with.”

Sheffield Shield 2025-26 standings