The story of Harry Brook who has broken Ranjisinhji’s 125-year old record
Harry Brook #HarryBrook
Three hundreds in three Tests in Pakistan. Harry Brook has broken a 125-year old English record of KS Ranjitsinhji for the most runs in the first 6 Test innings for England. Ranjit ji had 418, Brook was threatening to go past 500 in the third Test at Karachi. Incidentally, Vinod Kambli holds the record with 669 runs.
When he was impressing in the T20 world cup with breezy cameos, his childhood coach David Cooper told this newspaper to watch him in the Tests. He has been proven right.
It was a sight in the rain when Harry was about 14, that convinced Cooper that his boy was made of something special. Harry was talented but the word went around then that he was unfit and word would reach his ears that unless he did something about it and improved his fielding, county cricket might prove elusive.
“On a dark wet October day, I peeped over the fence, into the club, and what did I see? Young Harry running around the ground, finishing his laps with push-ups and stuff, and then running again. For a month, in that wet month, he was out there doing his stuff. You tell me, how many 14-year olds would do that?” Cooper asks rhetorically.
If you need a piece of real estate to pin down Harry Brook’s story, we can choose two places: His back garden that overlooks his club and a small bench at his club ground Burley-in-Wharfedale Cricket Club.
The garden often has a Brook T-shirt hanging out to dry. Jersey number 88, hanging upside down from Yorkshire, Lahore Qalandars, Northern Superchargers, Hobart Hurricanes.
The bench was built by his late grandfather Tony, a club player, a wood-maker, who had his sons David,Richard, and Nick all playing for the club. David is Harry’s father and it was Tony, Cooper says, who brought young Harry to the club, and would throw down for hours. Tuk, tuk, tuk …
“These days when he comes to the club to watch cricket, Harry sits on that bench. It somehow feels wholesome, sweet, if you know what I mean,” Cooper says.
The first time when Cooper saw Harry with a cricket bat was when the kid was 2 or 3. “He would hold it with his bottom-hand on top of the handle! But he would connect it properly; had marvellous hand-eye coordination. But he was pretty stubborn and won’t change it until his grandfather gently coaxed him,” Cooper laughs.
Around the time, he lost his chubby weight, slogging hard in rain, he would secure a scholarship to the prestigious private school Sedhburg which has produced rugby Internationals and was developing a reputation for cricketers. “It was a big moment in his life. Perhaps had he not gone there, he would have been like other kids practising on the weekends and playing a bit in the evenings. But the school encouraged talented sportspeople, and he would play cricket a lot,” Cooper says.
Cooper says that Harry would run into former Durham and Sussex wicketkeeper Martin Speight at the school and improve his batting. “Speight would start his cricketing nets pretty early about 6 am but Harry was always there every morning.” Speight would be moved to tell the hockey coach Mark Shopland if he ever bet on a kid playing for England, place it on Harry. Shopland, apparently, did put a 100 pounds on Harry at 100-1. It was under Speight’s advice that after a below-par county season, Brook added a trigger movement at the crease in 2019/20 that saw his averages jump up over 50.
In the series in Pakistan, just ahead of the world cup, Brook starred with a few good knocks, a 35-ball 81 being the highlight. Mark Wood would compare him with AB de Villiers to the press and would later tell Brook not to let him down after that comparison. “I used to love watching him bat but I want to be the best Harry Brook though. I don’t want to be somebody else,” he would tell The Telegraph. “I want to do as well as I can do and play the way I want to.”
It’s ironic that the batsman who is making his name in T20 cricket loves ‘the perfect forward defensive’ shot.
Cooper said he laughed when he heard Harry say that in a recent interview. “I remember I told him once that to grow as a cricketer and make a name for himself against tougher bowling attacks, he needed a good solid forward defence. And we would be there at the side of the club nets for hours, polishing his forward defence. That’s what I was taught when I was young,” says Cooper who once slammed an attack led by India’s Madan Lal for a strokeful hundred for the club with 11 fours and 4 sixes. “This was a week after Madan Lal had bowled out England for about 120!”
In his Betway column, Kevin Pietersen would write this September: “He is the future, in my opinion. He’s got all the shots and can play in so many different circumstances. Keeps it very simple, but just the way he bats makes it hard. People who can pull you from the top of the stumps are hard work because that’s obviously where you’re trying to bowl it. And he knows his game, so because he’s in the middle order he’ll make sure he is in at the end, and then he goes, and because he ramps you have to have fine leg back so you’re effectively playing with four fielders, because then he won’t play it, and he hits it wide, so he’s very hard work, and I’ll keep telling him that until he stops.”
Nasser Hussain too has been a vocal supporter. “Harry Brook is just going to be a superstar in all formats, he really is. His run-getting over the last couple of years at Yorkshire has been prolific and I think it will continue to be.”
Cooper doesn’t need any convincing of course. For a man who first saw Harry bat when he was 2 and been following his career for years, he is already over the moon with Harry’s performance in the world cup.
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“So good… a lot of people would not expect to be winning the World Cup at 23,” Brook would say at the end of the world cup. “There is a lot more. As KP and Nasser have said, the cricketing world is going to see him star in Tests.” He certainly has started off like a runaway train.