Steve Harmison stood at the top of his mark, all alone. It is a naked place, preparing to bowl the first ball of a most-likely doomed Ashes series in a bearpit like the Gabba, surrounded by a wall of 40,000 rabid Brisbanites who do not wish you well and are vocally letting you know about it.
As he ran towards the crease the noise grew louder. Harmison has tried many times to explain what happened next, why the ball flew diagonally out of his grasp, skidded off the wicket and ended up in the lap of captain Andrew Flintoff at second slip. “I froze,” he said at the time. “My whole body was nervous. I could not get my hands to stop sweating. The first ball slipped out of my hands, the second did as well and, after that, I had no rhythm, nothing.”
