Simon Harmer's decade of reinvention reached its crescendo in Kolkata. Naman Agarwal traces the South African spinner's long-winded journey to Test success.
For one of the most destructive batters against spin in Test cricket, Rishabh Pant also boasts of a compact defence that has seen him average over 50 against the slower bowlers. But in the 10 balls he faced off Simon Harmer on the third afternoon at Eden Gardens, he was made to look clueless.
One ball hit him on his shoulder and a couple on the pads. He barely kept out a 92 kph slider before watching a 78 kph turner rip past his bat. Eventually, inevitably, Pant offered a tame return catch to South Africa’s protagonist.
Soon after, Harmer trapped another modern master of spin, Ravindra Jadeja, with a 91 kph dart on his toes, bowled without any discernible change in action, release, or trajectory.
Six world-class spinners were on display on what was a spinners’ paradise in Kolkata. But none could go beyond four wickets in the game compared to Harmer’s eight. He executed his craft, coaxing the ball to drift, dip, and dance like it was obeying an old secret, with the kind of mastery you’d associate with someone carrying a thousand first-class wickets. Oh wait.
It was cricketing sorcery born of a journey that had taken him from South Africa to Kandivali, to Essex greatness, to two national comebacks, and to the Eden Gardens, where it all seemed to crystallise.
To understand how Harmer came to have his moment in the Kolkata sun after years of toil in the cool Chelmsford winds, you have to rewind more than a decade, to when he was a promising but incomplete off-spinner in South Africa.
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Chapter 1 - South Africa debut and the 2015 India tour
Having taken a five-for and scored a fifty on first-class debut in 2009 as a 20-year-old, Harmer had quickly established himself as one of the premier spin bowlers in the South African domestic circuit. But with Paul Harris and Imran Tahir around, he had to wait until 2015 to get a Test cap.
It arrived against the West Indies at Newlands, and on his first day as a Test cricketer, Harmer gave a glimpse of the menace he was going to be for left-handers around the world. Each of the three left-handers in West Indies’ top five, which included a certain Shivnarine Chanderpaul, fell to Harmer’s guile: one bowled, one leg before wicket, and one stumped.
“The last three or four days have been an emotional roller-coaster,” Harmer said after his debut. It would turn out to be the theme of his career.
Later that year, South Africa toured India for four Test matches. Harmer played the first game in Mohali and the third in Nagpur, picking up 10 wickets at 25. Decent returns for a non-Asian spinner less than a year into his international career. But on pitches which in Harmer’s words “disintegrated from day one”, it wasn’t enough.
R Ashwin took 31 wickets at 11, and Jadeja took 23 at 10. In fact, every bowler who picked up more than five wickets in that series did so at a better average than Harmer’s.
“I think [I was] just dealing with the expectations in 2015,” Harmer said after the second day’s play in Kolkata. “I was quite new to Test cricket. Ravi Ashwin was bowling like a jet, and I think he took close to 40 wickets (31) in that series. And it was the expectation that I needed to do the same, and dealing with that and putting myself under even more pressure [that made it difficult].”
As he would soon realise, he possessed the skill but not yet the deeper understanding of spin-bowling, which is what held his returns back from matching the lofty standards he set for himself.
Chapter 2 - You know nothing, Simon Harmer
In 2012, South Africa had sent some players on a skills camp to the Global Cricket School in Mumbai. Harmer was one of them. There, he met Umesh Patwal, a spin-bowling coach. After their brief interaction – which Patwal says left a mark on Harmer – the off-spinner found a way back to him in 2016, a year after the India tour, driven by the desire to become the best version of himself.
That is when Patwal would go on to dismantle Harmer’s understanding of spin, and rebuild it from the ground up.
“I had all these pre-conceived ideas as to what spin bowling was, how I needed to turn the ball more, how to get more control. And he basically laughed it off and said it’s all nonsense,” Harmer explains.
“I was on the verge of tears, because it was so frustrating that all these things that I thought I knew, I didn’t know. And I had to, not start again, but he basically re-taught me just some fundamental stuff.”
Among some of the major technical changes Harmer had to make was using his thumb more and not looking to get on his toes when delivering.
“I am against the traditional concept of going on the toe. You’re supposed to be on the whole feet, the bowling feet,” Patwal tells Wisden.com. “Coaches tell us to go on the toe, but I think it’s the worst thing to do. You have to be on your feet.”
“There are a couple of other things as well which were against the concept of what I was telling him. Like [the misconception that] you have to hold the ball hard. It needs to be more relaxed. Coaches tell you to fold your finger and hold the ball with the two-finger grip, but I advocate using the thumb more, so the whole concept is different.”
Patwal’s ideas were almost rebellious compared to the formal structures Harmer had grown up with. But Harmer trusted him. And more importantly, they were effective.
Their sessions weren’t just restricted to the technicalities of spin bowling though. “When he was in Kandivali at I Think Sports (Patwal’s academy) with me, we would not just talk about bowling, we would talk about winning. And that’s what he said in an interview: he’s not a stats person (‘I am not a stats man. I am a win man.’).” Patwal elaborates.
Chapter 3 - Goodbye South Africa, Hello Essex
As he rebuilt his craft in Kandivali, Harmer slipped out of the national plans. His domestic returns seemed to carry little weight in South Africa, and with no pathway back to the Test side, he chose stability and certainty over waiting for an opportunity that no longer felt real, signing a Kolpak deal with Essex in 2016.
"It's not the decision a 27-year-old wants to make," Harmer told ESPNcricinfo in 2017, in the middle of his first season with Essex. "I felt that in terms of the longevity of my career and the security of my future family one day, I needed to do it.
"In terms of national cricket in South Africa, I wasn't being selected in the A side and the national coach had said that domestic cricket is not good enough to select from. I was dropped straight from the national side into franchise cricket. It wasn't a decision I wanted to make at such a young age but I have done what I feel is best for me and my family and I am extremely happy here."
By the time he arrived in Chelmsford, he was an improved bowler. And it showed. It didn’t take long for Harmer to establish himself as the best red-ball spinner in the county circuit. His first season saw him pick up 72 wickets at 19 and take Essex to a County Championship victory. 2019 was even more prolific, fetching him 83 wickets at 18.
His association with Patwal continued as he picked wickets like clockwork in England. The Mumbai-based coach recalls with pride how Harmer facilitated his travel and stay in Abu Dhabi when he was there for pre-season camps with Essex.
“He called me in 2017 and 18, to Abu Dhabi. He had a couple of pre-season sessions there with Essex. He paid money for my stay there. I still remember, it was my first day at a seven star hotel. He booked the flight and visa and everything. He took the permission from Essex, where the team was practicing in different nets and we both had a single net.”
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While red-ball cricket almost became Harmer’s identity, he quietly kept evolving his game in the shorter formats. Patwal was there in this part of his journey too.
“I was in England when he called me to Chelmsford. We did something on his white-ball [game]. The same year he won the T20 Championship (T20 Blast, 2019) as well. He was the player of the match in the semi-final as well as the final,” Patwal accurately recalls.
Harmer, leading Essex in the T20 format by then, took 4-19 in the semi-final and 3-16 in the final. And to top it off, he played a defining seven-ball cameo off 18 when they needed 17 off eight to seal the trophy.
At one point, Harmer even considered playing international cricket for England but Brexit put paid to those plans.
“I have explored trying to get on to a different visa so that I can have more rights, in terms of buying property and a whole load of other things, but I got a very stern ‘no’ from [head of cricket operations] Alan Fordham at the ECB. As far as I am concerned there is no future there,” he said in 2020.
But international cricket wasn’t done with him yet.
Chapter 4 - International return
"Can I rock up on day five at the MCG and spin a team out? Or am I not good enough to do that? Am I good enough to go to India? I've tried it once and failed. Can I deal with the pressures of international cricket?” Harmer pondered in a chat with ESPNcricinfo in 2020.
He has the answers to those questions now.
Harmer first returned to the South Africa set up in 2022, picked in the squad for the New Zealand tour. A place in the playing XI came in the next series, at home against Bangladesh.
Over a period of one year, he played five Test matches, picking up 19 wickets at 25 - slightly better returns than his 20 wickets at 29 in his first five Tests.
But linearity has evaded Harmer’s career path like the north poles of two magnets. He was dropped after the West Indies series, as county wilderness ensued again.
From seeking Patwal to signing the Kolpak deal in order to secure a future for his family, Harmer had given enough evidence of his proactivity as far as his career was concerned. It came to the fore again, when a phone call with South Africa head coach Shukri Conrad brought in a new ray of hope.
“When Simon called me up a few months ago and he said he’s desperate to play for South Africa again, I was more desperate to have him back,” Conrad said at the post-match press conference in Kolkata.
And so, as South Africa embarked on a gruelling subcontinent tour with the tag of defending champions on their backs, they recalled Harmer. This time not as a fringe player filling a gap, but as a specialist chosen for relevant conditions.
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In Pakistan, he took his first Test five-for and reached a thousand first-class wickets, before returning to the land that had marked the end of his first phase as an international cricketer. This time, Harmer arrived older, calmer, lighter in the shoulders but heavier in experience. The years in Chelmsford had given him thousands of overs of muscle memory. The years with Patwal had given him clarity. And the years out of the side had given him hunger. Hunger that helped him turn a corner at the Eden Gardens.
“I think other bowlers have more experience than him, if you look at the numbers of Keshav Maharaj - Keshav is an amazing kid himself - and the Indian spinners. But the belief and that commitment [that Harmer had], you know, he was very hungry, which is why he was much better than all these guys I think,” Patwal says.
The last time he was in India, Harmer was learning on the job and getting overshadowed by the brilliance of others around him. In Kolkata, he was the one others were learning from. His spell to Pant on the third afternoon lasted just 10 balls, but inside those 10 balls lived the full story of his reinvention: the variations in pace, the control of drift, the use of the thumb, the immaculate lengths. For a career defined by detours, Kolkata felt cathartic. The culmination of a decade’s worth of constant evolution.
It also left one thinking: what if Harmer played more international cricket? Would he have matched Ashwin and Lyon? Patwal doesn’t believe in dwelling on hypotheticals.
“Whatever happens, happens for the best. I am just happy where he is today, and the amount of recognition he is getting because of his cricket. I think it’s a great time and we should enjoy that instead of looking at how big he could have been. Now he still has four-five years of cricket and he’ll be amazing.”
Harmer may or may not be around for three-four years. He may or may not get to 50 Test matches. But he has something else: a career that travelled the long, unlit road, where belief must burn brighter than talent. And now, he also has his moment.
