T20 victory will give Essex belief to dominate, says Simon Harmer

NICK FRIEND AT EDGBASTON: The South African off-spinner, who captained the Eagles to a remarkable win at Edgbaston, was palpably the player on the day, taking seven wickets across games against Derbyshire and Worcestershire

Simon Harmer encouraged his Essex teammates to use their T20 Blast victory “to change the mentality of the club,” vowing that his team has all the tools in place to enjoy a successful period in the next five years.

The South African off-spinner, who captained the Eagles to a remarkable win at Edgbaston, was palpably the player on the day, taking seven wickets across games against Derbyshire and Worcestershire, before a cameo with the bat dragged his side over the line with the last ball of the final.

Essex had appeared dead and buried for much of the group stage, only sneaking through by beating Surrey and Kent in consecutive games, while other results went their way.

Yet, they made the most of their good fortune, beating Lancashire in the quarter-final thanks to an unbroken stand between Ryan ten Doeschate and Ravi Bopara, who excelled as a finisher for his side, though lower down the order than he would have liked.

“That was one of the decisions that needed to be made,” Harmer said of the call to move Bopara down to number six, having briefly dropped him from the side during the side's early struggles.

“In my opinion, Ravi is one of – if not the best – finisher of T20 innings, I felt in order to for us to win games, we needed him to come in and win games for us. Pointless him walking in at three and getting a good ball and he’s sitting back in the hut.

“Sometimes you need to prove people wrong in order to make them believe and I think that was the case with him. He came back after time away from the team. He brought in 100 percent and reaped the rewards. He’s an incredibly talented cricketer, the way he thinks about cricket and the way he bats, the way he bowls, the execution of his skill.

“He’s an unbelievable player. So, I can understand his frustration but hopefully even if it’s not now, five years down the line he can sit back and realise that he is actually best suited to five or six.”

^{Harmer performed remarkably to drag Essex to their first T20 crown}

There were eight homegrown players in Essex’s final side, with Sam Cook replacing Jamie Porter – a ninth – in the side for the clash with Worcestershire, who came so close to becoming the first team ever to retain the trophy.

On their closeness as a group, he added: “In my opinion, we have all the tools. We have all the players. We have what you cannot buy which is the camaraderie in the dressing room. There’s a lot of love in our dressing room for the guy next to you.

“In my opinion, you cannot buy that. You can bring in players, you can do what you want, but you can’t buy a bond between people. So that’s why I was quite vocal tonight in terms of how I want people – especially at Essex County Cricket Club – to change the mentality of a small cricket club because we don’t have the money.

“It’s always excuses. In my opinion, those need to go. We have the tools to be very competitive over the next five years in all three formats, but we need to start believing.

“As it works in cricket, when you need to chase down 300 in a 50-over game, people only start to believe when somebody scores a hundred or somebody takes a five-for.

“So now, with us winning this T20 trophy, I think the belief is there and the players now understand that actually we are good enough. All the noise in the background is just noise. Hopefully moving forward, we can be competitive and win more trophies.”

He reflected on his own South African upbringing and the need to understand himself in leading a team of English players. English cricket has not been without high-profile personality clashes, making Harmer’s own self-awareness all the more important.

“There were changes, in my opinion, that needed to happen in order for us to move forward as a T20 team,” he acknowledged.

“But the South African mindset and the competitive environment that I grew up in, to come over here you need to understand how things work.

I think if you look at some of the South African coaches, or sometimes the players that have come over have clashed heads with English players, I think there’s a certain narrative in terms of how things work and how to get people to buy in.

“For me to come in and just throw out demands and orders and this is how we’re going to play – I was very conscious of that at the beginning – of how I wanted to go about it, of how I needed to get the guys to buy in.

“There were some difficult decisions that needed to be made, a couple of players got dropped, senior players – not popular opinion in order to drop them, but what I felt was best for the team in order to get 11 guys on the park who were all pulling in the same direction.

"That was probably my toughest challenge, but after that things kind of went our way.”