Chris Zinzan Harris (born 20 November 1969) is a former New Zealand cricketer who became, over the course of the 1990s, a folk-hero in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
.
A left-handed middle-order batsman and deliverer of right-arm slow-medium deliveries, Harris rescued the New Zealand team's batting on numerous occasions and his deceptive looping bowling often restricted the run rates of opposition batting line-ups.
Personal life
Harris's father Zin Harris was also a New Zealand international player, and his brother Ben Harris has played at first-class level. All three of these players share the family traditional name of "Zinzan", also shared by a distant relation, former
All Black
The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987, ...
Zinzan Brooke
Zinzan Valentine Brooke (born Murray Zinzan Brooke on 14 February 1965) is a former New Zealand rugby union footballer who played at number eight.
Brooke played 58 tests for New Zealand, and 42 non-international matches for the All Blacks. He ...
.
Domestic career
In
first-class cricket
First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...
Harris has played 128 matches and scored over 7000 runs at an average of over 45, including 13 centuries with a highest score of 251*. He has taken over 120 wickets at an average of 38, with best figures of 4/22. However, his test career was limited to just 23 Tests, where his average with the bat was only around 20, and he took only 16 wickets at 73 runs apiece.
In 2007 Harris played for
Bacup
Bacup ( , ) is a town in the Rossendale Borough in Lancashire, England, in the South Pennines close to Lancashire's boundaries with West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. The town is in the Rossendale Valley and the upper Irwell Valley, east of ...
in the Lancashire League and finished the season as the League's highest wicket-taker with 82 at 13.08. Harris was the captain of the
Indian Cricket League
The Indian Cricket League (ICL) was a private cricket league funded by Zee Entertainment Enterprises that operated between 2007 and 2009 in India. Its two seasons included tournaments between four international teams (World XI, India, Pakistan ...
's
Hyderabad Heroes
Hyderabad Heroes was one of the eight teams that competed in the Indian Cricket League. The team was based in Hyderabad and its captain was former New Zealand player Chris Harris.
Coach
The inaugural coach for the Hyderabad Heroes was the forme ...
.
Harris is also a sensation at the indoor version of the game and represented Canterbury and New Zealand at will and is also involved in the coaching of Canterbury youth
indoor cricket
Indoor cricket is a variant of and shares many basic concepts with cricket. The game is most often played between two teams each consisting of six or eight players.Matthew Bell. Harris still played for the Premier team in the 1-Day competition.
International career
Harris's biggest contribution to the game, however, is in the
One Day International
A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...
arena in 2004, Harris became the first New Zealand player to have played 250 ODIs, in a season in which he was also the first New Zealander to take 200 wickets, at an average of 37 and an economy rate of just 4.28. In these matches, he also scored over 4300 runs at an average of 29 and has over 90 catches in the field. Harris also has a reputation for his abilities as a close fielder, achieving many run-outs with accurate throwing from positions such as the square leg.
Harris had been a genuine pace bowler – albeit a wayward one – as a junior cricketer, but decided, under the watchful eye of a mentor
John Bracewell
John Garry Bracewell (born 15 April 1958) is a former New Zealand cricketer who was most recently the coach of the Irish national team. He played 41 Test matches between 1980 and 1990, as well as 53 One Day Internationals. He was the second N ...
, to sacrifice a few yards of pace for accuracy. His gentle looping swing bowling makes the batsman work hard, as the ball is less likely to speed to the boundary, and the deceptiveness of the ball's speed often leaves them attempting to play the ball too early.
Trivia
Harris is currently second in the list of the world record for the most
caught and bowled
Caught is a method of dismissing a batsman in cricket. A batsman is out caught if the batsman hits the ball, from a legitimate delivery, with the bat, and the ball is caught by the bowler or a fielder before it hits the ground.
If the ball h ...
dismissals in ODIs with 29 just after
Muttiah Muralitharan
Deshabandu Muttiah Muralitharan ( si, මුත්තයියා මුරලිදරන්, ta, முத்தையா முரளிதரன், also spelt Muralidaran; born 1972) is a Sri Lankan cricket coach, former professional c ...
who has 35 dismissals in his career.
Chris Harris holds the record for scoring the most number of ODI runs when batting at number 7 position( 2130) and also he became the first man to score 2000+ ODI runs at number 7 position.
Injury
Unfortunately, Harris's performance in his 250th match was curtailed by a serious shoulder injury, and for some time the future of his career was in doubt. In his early post-shoulder injury games, he was forced to remove the medium-slow from his repertoire and was decidedly less effective. Performances for the New Zealand A side in September 2005 were more promising, however, with several very economical performances against Sri Lanka A.
After cricket
Harris become one of many high-profile international cricketers to move to
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
to be involved in the country's cricket, and was in charge of the national U-19 side. He also was a cricket commentator for Sky Sport.