Socks, snacks and sixes – Harris shares recipe for success

Aussie allrounder on the serious subject of not taking cricket too seriously

Valkerie Baynes17-Apr-2024Hold your catches, sprint every run and win the key moments – it’s an ethos which has led the Australian Women’s cricket team to two ODI world titles and four T20I World Cups in the past decade. Not some mystical aura and certainly not a pair of lucky socks.The concept of executing every little detail better than the opposition to gain a competitive edge might at first sound slightly at odds with the relaxed, cheeky persona of Grace Harris. But is it really?As someone who used to dip into an “Esky” (cool box) for snacks while fielding at fine leg or leave a sweet hanging from her mouth while she flung out the hand that put it there to take a slips catch and who more recently said “stuff it, I’ll hit it anyway” before smashing a six with a broken bat in a jaw-dropping WBBL innings, Harris doesn’t immediately scream ‘attention to detail’. But she does keep things logical.”A lot of people talk about the gap that the Australian Women’s cricket team has,” Harris tells ESPNcricinfo’s Powerplay podcast. “But to be honest, England, Australia, India, they all come now with franchise cricket, they all have a very high performance program, every country that I can think of has at least contracts now for the women’s game, so if you’re going to have all the same resources, of course cricket’s going to be competitive because that’s generally what happens.”Then it comes down to your talent and your ability to handle the mental stress, I guess, in a game, or the competitiveness in the moment. What Australia has done very well over the past five, six years is they’ve won those moments, the key moments.”As an example, Harris points to Harmanpreet Kaur’s run-out during India’s T20 World Cup semi-final defeat to Australia last year when Harmanpreet’s bat sticks in the pitch short of the crease as she “jogs” a second run and she finds herself out of her ground as Alyssa Healy whips off the bails.”An Australian player probably doesn’t do that in that moment, they’re probably running through,” Harris says. “I haven’t really seen Beth Mooney jog two in a game.”If you look at little key moments in games and how the Australian women’s cricket team, some of the players, have approached the moment, I think that’s the difference, not some gap that’s made up or just, I dunno, an imaginary line.”I can’t fault our domestic setup. It’s very competitive and it’s well run and I think we get the most opportunity to try and be placed in those pressure situations so that way then if you are selected for Australia, it is just the same as you in Big Bash and it’s just simply about performing again in the moment. So yeah, we’ve had the programs in place, but now that everybody’s got programs in place, surely you can’t keep saying that that’s the reason that we’re the best.”