Harry Tector interview: 'Sometimes I value my wicket too much'
In a World Cup year, Ireland's number four is using franchise opportunities to improve his attitude towards risk in the game's shortest format
When Harry Tector cost Cricket Ireland thousands of pounds worth of lost match balls, such was the volume of white Kookaburras that disappeared out of Chelmsford, you wouldn’t have thought the Irish batter was concerned with taking risk. Tector scored 140 off 113 deliveries that day vs Bangladesh last year, clearing the ropes 10 times in what was arguably the best outing of his career to date.
Such was the scramble to keep the game going amidst Tector’s boundary flurry, Cricket Ireland employees were bashing up new Kookaburras in Essex’s indoor school in a desperate bid to have balls comparable to ones used for 40+ overs ready to go.
We've seen Tector in this mood on numerous occasions in 50-over cricket, the format that day. Against New Zealand in Malahide, Tector hit five maximums in one innings and 14 boundary fours in another as he hit notched first two international centuries five days apart.
Yet in T20, since his meteoric post-Covid rise, we’ve only seen Tector in that effortless boundary mood perhaps once: India in Malahide, the same summer as those New Zealand games. Tector launched Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umran Malik and Axar Patel to all parts in an unbeaten innings of 64. His strike-rate was a staggering 194.
There have been other days where Tector has fired to a similar level in T20: 47 runs at a strike-rate of 181 vs the Dutch in 2019, 29 at 171 vs Afghanistan in 2020 and 60 at 140 also vs the Netherlands in 2019. Yet since Tector started to raise global eyebrows with his 50-over form, that run hasn’t translated as consistently to the shorter format.
There have been signs that this might change. Against Zimbabwe before Christmas, Tector was named player of the series. Knocks of 48 off 38 and 55 off 45 were instrumental to Ireland’s two successful chases that secured the T20 series. Despite the victories, Tector wasn’t fluid. Both efforts saw him strike in the 120s. In the third T20, at one point he was on 13 off 21 deliveries, scrapping hard.
Speaking from Bangladesh, where he is playing franchise cricket for the Sylhet Strikers, Tector looks back on those days with mixed feelings. Yes, he helped the winning cause, but no one wants to be battling in T20.
"I hate batting like that,” jokes Tector, recalling his difficulty finding the fence. “Sometimes I struggle with caring too much a little bit sometimes, I know that sounds stupid but I’ve spoken with some of the Irish lads about this. Sometimes I care too much and take too much responsibility, or value my wicket too much in a certain scenario.
“I might get the job done but I don’t like playing that way. Zimbabwe would be a good example, the third T20, I did the job and that was great and we won the series, that’s goal number one, but I don’t love the way that I played there.
“I’d love to go out - I’m trying to get better - try and not care as much about your wicket or the match scenario because I think that’s how you play your best. [But] I struggle to do that because I just want to win.
“Often if we were 10-2, 15-3, I would try and take a lot of responsibility and rebuild the innings and potentially strike at 110, or 100 for a period of time when, even by doing that, you’re not getting the score you need.
“I’d love to try and take the game on more, at risk of being 20-4, but the flip side being we score 160 if I bat well from that position instead of 145. Obviously there are times when I’ll have to knuckle down or rebuild or go at the rate, even in a T20, and I will always do that.
“There are definitely times when I take on too much, maybe responsibility is the wrong word, but trying to bat to set it up instead of taking the game on fully and take more risk. Not for fear, I don’t bat with fear of getting out, but maybe for letting the team down.”
Tector is clearly driven by the match situation and the desire to win. Even when at his best in 50-over cricket, flaying the ball to all parts, it is because he has set the game up. He is already 50, 60 or 70 not out and the situation calls for him to accelerate.
In T20, Ireland have made a conscious decision to come down a gear from overs 7-10. According to their own data analysis, that is an area where they have historically lost too many wickets. Ireland are arguably strongest at the back end, with the likes of George Dockrell, Mark Adair, Gareth Delany and Barry McCarthy able to clear the ropes regularly. They don’t want those players in too early. Tector, alongside his middle-order colleagues Lorcan Tucker and Curtis Campher, have been instructed to set the game up for the big guns down below while taking appropriate risk, as opposed to score at 10 runs per over themselves.
Yet such a gameplan, taking the game deep as opposed to putting the foot down from ball one, may be in conflict with Tector’s desire to take more risk without worrying about the game situation.
“I get what you’re saying,” he acknowledges. “With our make up, we’ve definitely gone in with five out-and-out bowlers. We’ve been playing with a batter less.
“A big one for us is that 7-10 period, trying to bat at a lower gear to make sure we have wickets to come home at the end. A couple of times during the summer we were five down at 10 or 11 overs and it just gives you no firepower at the end because, if you lose two wickets in the 13th or 14th over then you’ve nothing to come home with.
“It’s definitely a slight change of tack from how we were playing in the World Cup in Australia, but the stats suggest that’s the best for us.
“I actually quite like it because it doesn’t mean we’re shutting up shop in that period, it just means we’re trying to bat with an eye on that back half or back eight overs.
“I remember being happy about that period in Zimbabwe. At the end of the series speaking to Lorcan and Curtis, at 3, 4 and 5, the ones who were batting at that period of time, we felt like we had done the job which we were trying to do.”
If playing devil’s advocate, two ripostes would come to mind. When setting up a T20 line-up with McCarthy batting at nine, that depth should allow for more consistent aggression throughout the innings given the batting to come. It’s what England have done with Adil Rashid down the order. Being gung ho, if you want to call it that, can cost you the odd game when it goes wrong, but if you do it for long enough with success you will simply blow teams away.
The second point centres on the roll of Tector. By asking him to bat down a gear, unless chasing a middling-to-low total, are Ireland taking the match-winning duties out of his hands? Many see Tector as Ireland’s best batter and want him to be the one taking games on, not keeping the side in it long enough for others to do the fast-scoring damage. Perhaps the powers have be have decided that in T20 cricket, Tector is not that match-winner.
Any opinion can be had on a tactical decision. For now, Ireland’s formula is a winning one. It will be more strongly tested in the T20s against Afghanistan once the Test match and ODIs are concluded.
The other opinion on Tector as an individual is that, coming in at number four, he is batting too low in the T20 side. This writer was particularly excited to see Sylhet ask him to open the batting in his latest franchise stint. Three scores in single figures suggested the new role was an adjustment, but a knock of 61 vs Khulna showed the experiment was by no means a failure.
“I find it so alien,” says Tector, laughing. “I don’t even think when I played at Sandford [his school] that I opened the batting, I couldn’t tell you the last time, I could have been 11-years-old.
“I found it really challenging particularly under lights when the ball is moving around. Then it was nice to get some runs the other day, albeit still not very fluent but that was a better pitch, easier to bat on.”
If it was needed, the move to open was another sign that franchise coaches often look at players completely differently to their international bosses. Tector’s bowling adds to that perception. His off-spin has been used frequently in Bangladesh, at times even to open the bowling. In five games, he took four wickets at an average of 24.5.
“I was saying to the lads, I don’t rate my bowling highly at all, I talk it down quite a bit which isn’t good,” says Tector. “But I love the competition, I love the pressure that bowling brings. It’s quite exhilarating having the ball in your hands, as an off-spinner in T20 and bowling to two right handers when you know they’re really coming at you.
“I bowl with a batter’s mindset, which a lot of the time is why I think my bowling is so crap because I would be trying to absolutely launch my bowling, trying to hit it so far. That helps me when I bowl, I have a fair idea of what they’re looking for and have a decent way of trying to avoid giving them that.
“I definitely don’t train my bowling as well as I train my batting, I don’t dedicate the same amount of time. You can only train for so long in a session and I’d rather work on my batting. I’m hoping Chris Brown, the new [Ireland] spin coach, forces me to bowl because otherwise I’ll just bat.
“I have bowled pretty decently albeit the wickets are definitely helpful. I’m happy with how I bowled. I’ve bowled some tough overs and haven’t been completely obliterated which is how I expect my bowling to be treated.”
While Tector won’t land in the UAE ahead of the Afghanistan series and demand that he opens the batting or bowling for Ireland, he believes being taken out of his comfort zone in Bangladesh has been beneficial. He looked to improve his scoring against spin, particularly pulling back-of-a-length deliveries over mid-wicket, while also building that mental resilience when it comes to taking risk.
“My game feels good, I’ve been searching for rhythm over here, I’m very much like that. I search for feeling and flow and I started to get it in that innings [61 vs Khulna]. It was nice to spend some time at the wicket and feel like a batter again.
“I feel like that big knock in a T20 setting is pretty close.”
Tector was recently named the Irish men’s player of the year in 2023, largely for his ODI and Test form. If that big T20 knock does come on more than one occasion, particularly in a World Cup year, he will go along way to remaining Ireland’s most important batter.