The Harry Gurney Story.

 

Twelve months without cricket: Harry Gurney's story of 2020

JON CULLEY: A combination of the coronavirus pandemic and a catalogue of injuries meant that Gurney's last game of cricket came late in 2019. But as he looks back on the frustrations of the last year, he wants to take the positives

Life has been anything but normal for cricketers across the world since global pandemic became a phrase in everyday use almost a year ago, but few players have seen their careers placed on hold to quite the same degree as Nottinghamshire’s globe-trotting T20 specialist Harry Gurney.

Between Christmas and New Year, the left-arm seamer passed a milestone he never expected to note while still an active player, having gone a full 12 months since he last bowled a ball in competitive cricket.

After giving up red-ball cricket in 2018 in order to devote the final chapter of his professional career to touring the world’s T20 franchises, Gurney’s experience, know-how and propensity for taking wickets in the lucrative modern format had made him a coveted asset.

In 2019 he’d won titles with Melbourne Renegades in the Big Bash and Barbados Tridents in the Caribbean Premier League, as well as reaching Finals Day with Nottinghamshire in the T20 Blast, in which over the three seasons between 2017 and 2019 he had accumulated 66 wickets, the biggest haul by any bowler over that period.

Little did he know that the torn hamstring against Adelaide Strikers that curtailed his second Big Bash campaign with the Renegades would turn into a whole year’s cricket written off.

“It all started with that torn hamstring, so it is not entirely down to Covid,” Gurney said. “Had the Renegades made the final, I might have recovered by then and been available to play. But they didn’t, so I came home.

“I’d opted out of the PSL and my next engagement was meant to be the IPL, where I was signed up for Kolkata Knight Riders again,” he said. “Then Covid hit and what was meant to be a few weeks off turned into months.”

In the event, a prolonged rest proved to be the last thing he needed. By the time cricket in England resumed in August, Gurney had been more than seven months without a competitive match and when he attempted to gear himself up for a return in the rescheduled Blast in September, his 33-year-old body, specifically his left shoulder, raised its objections in painful terms.

“I’d actually been managing a problem with my shoulder for about four or five years,” he said. “I was getting by, doing all the rehab and with the odd jab it was okay.

“But when I started bowling again at Trent Bridge in August while the Bob Willis Trophy was going on it didn’t like it at all. I suspect what happened is that the extended rest period, instead of doing it good, caused it to seize up.”

A visit to the Manchester clinic of Professor Lennard Funk, one of the world’s most respected shoulder surgeons, confirmed the fears of the physiotherapy staff at Trent Bridge, identifying a torn rotator cuff, with surgery the only option if he were to continue playing.

Gurney went under the knife in mid-September before returning home to Leicestershire, where a tot-up of how much this unfortunate series of events had cost him in financial terms was hardly the ideal tonic.

“As a result of Covid-19 and injury, which are interlinked really, missing the IPL and the CPL, and with Hundred falling by the wayside, it has cost me around $300,000 all told,” he said.

“My contract with the IPL was around $110,000, plus $90,000 at Barbados and £75,000 in the Hundred.”

By anyone’s standards, these are not trifling sums, although Gurney is keen not to labour the financial blow and insists that, despite the hit to his pocket, the lay-off has almost been a blessing.

“Not being able to play has been a real pain obviously,” he said. “But the first 18 months on the T20 circuit provided us with a nice cushion financially and in a perverse kind of way I might look back on 2020 quite fondly.

“For the last 20 years I’ve been playing pretty much every summer weekend and then going away during the winter so being able to spend quality time at home with Avril and my young son Arthur has been wonderful.

“I’ve also been able to focus on the business, rather just than dip in and out, and I’ve loved it. My dad used to have a giftware shop in Loughborough and I think business is in my blood.

“I’ve been going upstairs to my office at seven or eight in the morning and not coming down until three or four in the afternoon and I’ve drawn up a comprehensive five-year plan.”

That business - the Cat and Wickets Pub Company - consists of two village pub-restaurants in Leicestershire, the Three Crowns at Wymeswold and the Tap and Run at Upper Broughton, with plans to open at a third site in 2021.

“Obviously Covid has hit us quite hard in terms of business too but once we get through the crisis with the vaccine roll-out I believe the economy will bounce back strongly,” he said.

As for cricket, for all his enthusiasm for the business, Gurney is eager to taste competitive action again.

“It was hard to be watching on TV at home when Notts were winning the Blast last summer, for all that I was delighted for the lads,” he said.

“And watching the Big Bash at the moment I’ve found myself wishing I was there. I’m looking at guys and thinking: ‘I could do better than that.’

“But that’s good because it shows the appetite to play is still there.  I’m due to start bowling again properly in the next week or so and although I’m a little bit anxious about how that’s going to go, Pipey (James Pipe, the Trent Bridge physio) thinks I’m ahead of where he might expect me to be given the surgery I have had.

“I’m still hoping to go to this year’s IPL if they will have me but failing that, all being well I’ll be back for the English summer.”

Although Gurney turned 34 in October and his family is due to be expanded in April with the arrival of a second child, retirement plans are not yet on the agenda.

“It’s hard to predict these things. I might come back to bowling, find that my shoulder is knackered and I’m finished now, or I might still be playing in another five years.

“You just can’t say but I want to go on as long as I feel I can perform and, who knows, I might look back on the extended rest as the best thing that ever happened to me.”

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