Harmison seeks to revive the devil of Sabina Park.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

When the fifth ball of his first over against West Indies A at Warner Park on St Kitts sprang wickedly from just short of a length and smacked into the right shoulder of the prot'g' Trinidadian opener Adrian Barath, once more hope sprang that Steve Harmison was back. It has been a while, it seems.

In 2006 on an old Trafford pitch that had the bounce of Tigger with bedsprings on his feet Harmison put Pakistan to the sword with devastating match figures of 11 for 76. Since then 16 more Tests have passed and not a five-wicket sausage. A year ago, in New Zealand, he was dropped from the team and returned to Durham, where he cut down county batting as if scything through a spring meadow. Harmy is a bowler who needs to bowl in quantity and there had been his chance. He came back for the South African finale last summer and for the match in Chennai before Christmas, but it was hardly earth shattering. He was not fit he has said (why not?), but is adamant that he is up to the mark now.

It seems he is knocking at the door once again, his four wickets in the massive first innings of West Indies A certain to secure his place in the side for the first Test at Sabina Park that begins in two days time. Ah... Sabina Park. The famous West Indian fortress and Harmison are inextricably linked in the annals of the game. For it was there, on a mid-March day five years ago, that he produced, like a particularly remarkable and unexpected rabbit from a hat, one of the definitive England fast- bowling performances -- in the real fiery sense -- of modern times, up there to rank or even outstrip Devon Malcolm's searing "you-guys-are-history" nine for 57 against South Africa and Bob Willis's madcap flapping eight-wicket haul that won the Headingley Test of 1981. It was that good.

In 12 overs and three balls of high velocity, relentlessly probing back-of-a-length seam, eight of which were maidens, he took seven West Indian second-innings wickets for 12 runs, sending them tumbling to their lowest ever Test-match total of 47. From the time that Graham Thorpe snaffled Chris Gayle, towards the end of Harmison's fourth over, to the wicket of Fidel Edwards in the middle of his twelfth to finish the innings, 53 deliveries had brought all his haul for only eight runs. No bowler has claimed better Test figures at Sabina. Not even the great Jamaicans Michael Holding or Courtney Walsh. No one.

In that couple of hours, his bowling attained a level of inevitability, surreal almost, where ...