Saying Nothing, Saying It All

I found the inane interviews given by Steve Harmison after play yesterday depressing and infuriating and I was pleased to see that Gideon Haigh has written about them in his Cricinfo blog.

Harmy was obviously determined to stick to the England team's party line of refusing to acknowledge that there might be any identifiable reason (least of all lack of preparatory cricket) for anything which has happened in Australia, but when you hear somebody stating that everything has, basically, 'just happened', you tend to feel that your intelligence is starting to be insulted.

To use one of the oldest sporting journalistic cliches in the (very large) book, Harmison is quite an enigma. But he often seems so bereft of spirit, desire and nous that you have to start to wonder whether Rod Marsh's recent prediction in The Observer that he will have retired from all cricket by 2009 (when he will only be 30) might turn out to be very accurate indeed.