“They just said I’ll start 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 selectors’ communication
Harris was asked after the second day’s game if he felt he had done enough to earn a call-up and was generally pragmatic about it. “I don’t know, it’s a good question,” he said. “I think, externally, obviously this game was developing a lot, which is fair enough. “I feel like I’ve been hitting well, but so have a lot of other people.
“So if they call me, I feel like I’m ready to do it, and if not, 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 like I did. at the beginning of this season. My results from last year probably said that, so I’m proud of that.”
“They just said I’m going to start 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 some more clues into the selectors’ thoughts, but he was not reading too much into it given his previous experiences with Australia A and the 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’s not like that,” Harris said. “I think this time I’ve probably accepted it a little more than before. I think in the past I probably tried really hard to avoid it. That probably strengthens it a little more, whereas this I probably took it as it came to me and accepted it as it is. I think I could have said a couple of weeks ago at the Junction Oval that I could probably write all the articles that will be published written in the next two weeks, so none of that is surprising, I think every time you pass. for things more often, you get used to it more, you’re more prepared to deal with them. I probably just have more experience with it.”
“If the wicket is working a little, [he said] You don’t always have to try to get it right by four, try to get it right by two. And it was a simple thing that kind of shocked me a little bit,” Harris said. “I think a lot of times when you do well on terrain like that, you actually spend a lot of time on the other end.”
Harris noted that he needed some luck, as he played and missed a lot and came up one short of the goalie on opening night. He was also extremely lucky when he was not out in the 48th over – he tried to deflect off-spinner Tanush Kotian towards the leg side and the ball deflected and slipped. India A was convinced it had gone over the edge, but the umpire thought it was a pad.
“I hit my deck on the way,” Harris said. “That’s why I stood my ground. Then the referee didn’t call it, so I was like, I don’t know. But then we watched the replay and I think the guys said they’d seen it 20 times and you couldn’t really do it. So I The truth is, I wasn’t sure, but if they had checked it and said you would have hit it and gotten caught. [thought] that seems fine to me.
“It just went my way.”
Alex Malcolm is associate editor of ESPNcricinfo
