Arun Harinath's destiny was never quite as it seemed

NICK FRIEND: As so often, external opinion juxtaposed the reality. To many onlookers, Harinath’s journey was typical – a wunderkind following his natural path. In his own mind, however, he was less certain of his existence as a professional cricketer

From the outside, Arun Harinath was always destined to make it. For some who witnessed his talent in the early years, he was destined to go further than he went, destined to be approaching his prime just about now.

He featured at the Bunbury Festival in consecutive years as a teenager; he played for England at age-group level; he made his debut for Surrey’s second team as a 15-year-old, having played for the under-19 side a year earlier.

On his first-class debut – for Loughborough University against Somerset, he battled his way to a half century; a teammate back then recalls that particular knock as the greatest sign of any that the left-hander had it, whatever it was. It was a skillful, gutsy innings against an attack still then led by Andrew Caddick.

A summer contract at Surrey came next, followed by a more permanent deal; and for twelve years, that was all Harinath knew – at least in the terms of what he describes as “the cricket bubble”.

And yet, it is eight months now since his final season as a professional cricketer came to an end, longer still since he knew his time was up. It was a conversation he always knew might come, one – in truth – he had long been gearing up for; it is why the previous decade had included a second degree at the Open University in politics, philosophy and economics.

At Loughborough, a university he had picked on account of its cricket – he was coached there by Graham Dilley – and also a genuine interest in his studies, he read social psychology. There were work experience stints along the way with FICA, and sports marketing agencies CSM and Pitch International; retirement has led him to a job at A&W Capital, a specialist investment banking firm.

You see, to understand Harinath the cricketer is to understand why he has transitioned so smoothly from player to ex-player and also to understand why that presumed ‘destiny’ was never quite as it seemed.

“I started pretty early looking at what comes next,” he reflects. “Probably to my detriment really, I never had a massive amount of confidence in me being a professional cricketer.

“At 20, I didn’t think I was going to be a professional cricketer. I wanted to be but I didn’t think I would be – there’s always a subtle difference between the two. I was lucky in that in my third year at university, I was offered a summer contract. That was the first time I’d really realised that it was a real option. But even then, I was never 100 per cent sure of my existence as a county cricketer and those doubts, I suppose, were throughout.

“I was preparing all the way basically – not because it was almost too good to be true, but because of the feeling that the floor could fall from beneath me at any stage.”

As so often in elite sport, external opinion juxtaposed the reality. To many onlookers, Harinath’s journey was typical – a wunderkind following his natural path. “If you look at it from the outside, it’s like I was always going to play cricket,” he says knowingly, “but it actually didn’t feel like that.

“I just felt like I was surviving and I was always scared of making a mistake. I’ve never been the most self-confident person anyway – I was more self-confident outside of cricket, to be honest.”

^{Harinath made six first-class centuries}

Harinath is hugely impressive company – fascinating on his relationship with self-doubt and the challenging, shrinking world of the red-ball specialist, and rational enough to be immensely proud of a professional career that lasted six years longer than the average norm.

His best cricket, he reckons, came in two seasons under Graham Ford in 2014 and 2015 when he averaged almost 38 at the top of the order. In 2015 alone, that figure rose to 43.69. By his own admission, however, his mindset never quite allowed him to push on.

“I would have loved to have scored more runs for Surrey and opened the batting a lot more for the county,” he says. “It’s the county I was at since I was nine years old. The biggest frustration for me is: one, I didn’t score the runs – and I think if you spoke to anyone in my position, they’d say the same; two, I was never able to be as free as I wanted to be.

“It was always that self-doubt. Everyone has it and the best people are the people who manage it the best and still play how they want to play. Not letting it get me so down when I lost or got out would have been great. But it probably made me as much as anything else as well. On one hand, it can be paralysing; but on the other, that’s actually who I am and without it I might have had a three-year career.

“Self-confidence is interesting. It wasn’t paralysing because I did play well and there were periods where I played really well. It’s just that I wasn’t able to do that consistently and that was frustrating.

“I did what I could. I have no regrets on the amount of effort I put into it, to be honest. That’s the one thing I don’t have a regret on, in terms of my physical training and the time I spent working on everything – mentally, physically, tactically, I couldn’t have done much more. A lot of people can’t say that about the work they did. I can be comfortable in that.”

There are regrets, but only to an extent. Fulfilled yet unfulfilled – there was never a season when he was ever-present. The manner in which he has moved into a new career and a different industry, he believes, is indicative of a self-doubt that compartmentalised itself purely towards his cricket and never beyond. “I wouldn’t say it’s as far as Jekyll and Hyde, but me in cricket is a different person to outside of cricket,” he explains.

“I didn’t know when I was going to retire, but unless you play for England and you have a bit of financial security, if you’re just a ‘county cricketer’, a lot of county cricketers will have to get another job, unfortunately, and will be working for a lot longer than they play cricket.

“I had a 12-year career, which was better than most and I reckon that I’ll be working triple that. That’s the way it is. You just have to maintain perspective and have good people around you, and I was fortunate to have both of those things.

“Although I didn’t deal with self-doubt very well and it used to really affect me, I think my transition has been easier because of the perspective I maintained then.”

Is it his longstanding interest in psychology, I ask, that has allowed him to look back on all this with more than a measure of perspective?

“I think I’m happy with having a 12-year career – really fortunate, really grateful that I did do that,” he admits. “You have that tinge of a feeling where you wish you could have done a bit better. That’s the frustration.

“But that’s the frustration and the battle for a lot of players – you work hard, you train hard, but you don’t quite get the output you wanted. I don’t really think about my career. I’ve been six months out of the game and it’s almost like it was a million years ago because it’s been in the background of my life. I was almost another person. It’s an interesting one.”

^{The left-hander retired from professional cricket at the end of the 2019 season}

And of the player he became known as – an occupier of the crease, a doughty opening batsman in and out of the Surrey team between his first County Championship match in 2009 and his last appearance in 2018, was that the player he always was or the cricketer that he became?

“I think it’s the player I became,” he answers, “if I’m being completely honest and objective about my career. I always had a decent technique; even from a young age, I wasn’t scared of the ball or anything. I always played pace well, so I got up to the top of the order in the second team.

“People thought that about me anyway; I suppose I played into it a little bit as well because of my lack of self-confidence. That would be the best way of putting it – I wouldn’t say it was a complete lack, but I was probably more concerned with survival and occupation than scoring runs, which is a crucial part of batting.”

He thinks back to his days as part of the academy and the red-ball focus he learnt there. It was all about “long-form, four-day batting”, he remembers – a distant leap from the diet of today’s youngsters. Harinath himself is a Level Three coach and works with the club’s youth prospects – “now, to have a good career in the game, you need to be white-ball proficient,” he adds. “I probably wasn’t quick enough to adapt.” He only ever played seven List A games and never once featured for Surrey in T20 cricket.

Over the course of his years with the club, Kumar Sangakkara, Ricky Ponting, Hashim Amla, Graeme Smith and Kevin Pietersen could all be classed as teammates, while he came through an academy setup that – around the same time – also produced Jade Dernbach, Laurie Evans, Matt Spriegel, Chris Jordan, Zafar Ansari and Stuart Meaker.

He made his championship debut in a side captained by Stewart Walters, also featuring Usman Afzaal, Jon Batty, Chris Schofield, Alex Tudor and Rangana Herath. They are memories that act as a reminder of all that he accomplished. Few last as long at a single county.

He played just five first-class games in his final three seasons as his opportunities diminished; competition existed in the form of Mark Stoneman, Rory Burns and Scott Borthwick – all fine players. “I was the odd person out,” he reminisces.

“After a while, the writing is on the wall. As much as I thought I could still do a job, it was actually a good time to move on and think about the next chapter.”

Time is a healer and hindsight a privilege. “I suppose we’d be having a different conversation about it back then,” he offers with a wry chuckle, thinking back to the call that all contracted athletes fear. “It’s an emotive subject – you get told you’re getting the sack.”

^{He became a regular in the second team, playing a part in the development of several youngsters, including Ollie Pope and the Curran brothers}

Harinath was in the gym, recovering from an ankle ligament problem – similar to the football injury suffered by Burns in South Africa – when he was summoned to the office for a meeting.

“It was relatively jarring, definitely emotional,” he recalls. “It was the last time I really went up to the dressing room. I went in, picked up my stuff, packed my bag and left really.”

A loan spell with Hampshire came to nothing – the batsmen he had been called in as cover for returned to fitness. “After that, it was a place where I was like: ‘Okay, fine. Right, that’s where my career is at.’ I had to bow out gracefully.

“You’ve given a lot to playing cricket, a lot of your life. Since I was 10 years old, you know, my family and everyone else has as well. I’ve had to give that of myself and when someone tells you it’s all over, it’s a very difficult conversation to have. But, like in any industry, not many people go out on their own terms.”

There is a philosophical dignity to all that Harinath says. His departure was of little surprise when it was announced; as he had fallen down the queue, he made 99 appearances in the second team red-ball competition, making 19 centuries and 33 fifties at an average of 46.49 – a record that began as a 16-year-old and extended through to last August.

By the end, his role included an element of mentorship; he played alongside Burns, Ollie Pope, Dom Sibley, Ryan Patel, Amar Virdi and both Curran brothers at different points in the second string. “In that respect, it’s really rewarding,” he adds – speaking himself as a product of the county’s academy.

“But it’s difficult as well,” he confesses, “because you’re kind of stuck. It’s like Groundhog Day. And as much as it is a really important thing, it isn’t the same as first team cricket. It isn’t the same intensity; you’ve got to score runs in the 2s; you have to. Otherwise, no one is going to pick you in the 1s. But you can get into bad habits that are not necessarily applicable in first team cricket.

“So, it’s one of those where half of it is really great but when you get to a certain age, it’s not the be all and end all of your career. You want to be playing first team cricket. I was definitely in that spot towards the end. That’s what I mean about being released probably at the right time – I was playing in the 2s and there was no point. You might as well have had someone a bit younger playing who might be the future of the club.”

There’s a refreshing complexity to Harinath, a man at peace with his achievements. The tinge of sadness at staring down upon his sporting career in the past tense is countered by an acknowledgement of what he attained and by a rare capacity to separate cricket from all else.

“It’s a game that I love,” he finishes, his voice filled with a reflective confidence. “A lot of people don’t play 75 first-class games.”

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