Harmison baffles Sinclair

9:59am Monday 3rd March 2008

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MATHEW Sinclair is preparing for his maiden Test appearance against England, admitting his brief experience of their attack has left him more confused than ever about their abilities.

Despite making a stunning 204 on his Test debut against West Indies nearly nine years ago, 32- year-old Sinclair has yet to face England at Test or one-day international level.

Given his inexperience against the tourists' bowling firepower, his innings of 47 against them for the Select XI at Dunedin could be invaluable as he prepares for this week's first Test.

But despite spending 114 minutes at the crease, during which time he faced all of England's main bowlers with the exception of injured left-arm seamer Ryan Sidebottom, Sinclair learned very little - particularly about the talents of main spearhead Steve Harmison.

Sinclair witnessed the mercurial Harmison's full range, from his struggles early on when he was wayward in the extreme to his true ability as he improved to finish with five for 100.

He was a bit erratic,'' said Sinclair.

I felt it was quite hard to get some consistency from him from a batting point of view.

If someone is spraying it everywhere you never really get a feel for where he's trying to put the ball.

I hadn't faced Harmison before so I'll be speaking a lot with Stephen Fleming over the next two days in terms of what he tries to do.'' Sinclair remains one of the great enigmas of New Zealand cricket, having hit two double centuries inside his first 12 Test appearances. But indifferent form over the years has restricted him to 29 caps.

His most recent contribution in the Test series against Bangladesh last month was also disappointing for a player of his talent, scoring 76 runs in his two innings. But with Peter Fulton injured he knows he must take his chance.

The yo-yo ride continues,'' he conceded. I've put a lot of hard work in over the winter and I was lucky enough to play against Bangladesh. I've been presented with an opportunity to try and do well against the English.

This week has been really good as it's given me a good idea of how they're trying to bowl, and also from a batting point of view what I need to get out of it.

It was a good little trial period really.

It was disappointing not to go on with it after scoring 47, but Monty beat me on the day so fair play to him. It would have been good to post another hour out there but it's given me a really good idea about what the bowlers are doing.'' He added: If you look at the batting side of things there wasn't a heck of a lot of good things coming out of that Bangladesh series other than Matt Bell with his 100 and Flem with his 80.

There were a lot of inbetweens really.

I've moved on from there now and I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time in the middle.''