The Gordon Greenidge square cut

For the last couple of weeks, Zee Sports has run its 70s and 80s rewind show 'Cricket Replay' at the perfect time slot for me to watch while I ingest my brunch before I head for work.
Today, they played the 1984 Lord's Test, the one where Gordon Greenidge made 214 not out and made it look like David Gower had declared with England 141 ahead and not 341.
I only caught the second half of the knock, which included a number of clinical hooks, a whip that sailed way beyond the square leg boundary and the hardest hit I've ever seen, crunched straight past whoever the bowler was, either Neil Foster or Ian Botham - both bowler and umpire dropped to the ground like Didier Drogba in the penalty box.
Of this period of play Wisden Almanack says:

Although England finally blocked his square cut, the midwicket and long-on boundaries saw plenty of Greenidge's 29 4s.

I only saw two or three of Greenidge's famed square cuts, therefore, all of which only yielded singles. But what square cuts these were.
Some batsmen slap fours through point all day without once playing a square cut. With Greenidge, however, you got exactly what the label promised.
The compact stance so full of potential energy, the slight hunch of his shoulders, the decisive certainty of his footwork, the whirl of wrists at the end, even how the peak of his cap seemed to point exactly where the ball would go - this was a man born to show the world how the square cut should be played.

Harmless

For a few days now, a friend of mine has been saying that England must pick Steve Harmison for Edgbaston. He has been on fire in County cricket, he's saying, and he's a matchwinner. He isn't alone in this - Vic Marks, one of the more astute and engaging cricket writers around, has written two separate articles in the Guardian calling for Harmison's inclusion.
Now, I refresh my Twitter homepage, and here again is my friend, tweeting "They better play Harmless!"
I think they mustn't. Here's why.
In 30 Test matches since the first Test of the 2005 Ashes at 2005, Harmison's figures show that he's been, well, harmless.
He's picked up 94 wickets, at the average of 38.53 and a strike rate of 68.1. Both his five wicket hauls in this period came in the same Test, at Old Trafford against Pakistan just over three years ago. Measure that against an overall average of 31.78 and strike rate of 59.3.
Even in the 2005 Ashes, the supposedly talismanic Harmison's series average and strike rate were behind those of Simon Jones, Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard - the Matthew Hoggard whose role in that triumph is forgotten against the backdrop of Harmison hitting people on the helmet in a Test England lost.
Let's compare the career trajectories of the two H-men, shall we?
In the period I mentioned above - Harmison's harmless phase - Hoggard took 88 wickets in 26 Tests, averaging 31.98 and striking every 59.9 balls, with two five-wicket hauls. Not much worse than an overall average of 30.50 and strike rate of 56.00.
Even so, after both were dropped after bowling badly in a terrible defeat to New Zealand at Hamilton in March 2008, it was Hoggard who suffered the worse fate, disappearing entirely from the Test side. Harmison, meanwhile, has played four Tests in three series in three different continents, doing nothing to suggest he'll give Australian batsmen nightmares.
Hoggard's 'nip', an intangible quality that he apparently cannot do without, is gone forever, it seems, while Harmison's fiery pace and steep bounce can be summoned up as soon as he breathes the air of Northumberland.
Agreed, Hoggard, at 32 is older than Harmison by two years, but this isn't really a 'bring back Hoggy' blog post. It is, instead, a blog post that has veered entirely out of track, but attempts now to return to what it started out trying to say - no, sorry, Harmison shouldn't play.