Grace Harris: Brisbane Heat, Australian batter on her rise to stardom in WBBL and staying true to herself

Grace Harris has blasted her way to stardom in the WBBL, becoming one of Australia’s favourite cricketers. But as TIM MICHELL discovers, there’s more to the larrikin than meets the eye.

Grace Harris could be the loudest cricketer Australia knows very little about.

And, that’s how she likes it.

Harris has emerged as one of the faces of Women’s Big Bash League in recent seasons, winning over fans with her big hitting and infectious nature on the player microphone.

She gives enough that fans have an idea of who she is — fun-loving, energetic and a chatterbox — but draws a line when it comes to aspects of her personal life.

“I would say I am still fun. I still enjoy a lot of things in life. I just don’t want to talk a lot about it to journos,” Harris said.

“There’s some things I do like just doing just for me.

“I try to embrace a lot of things with the same enthusiasm in life as I do with cricket. That part of me doesn’t really change.

“It’s just simply there’s some things I don’t want to share with journos because I want that part just to be mine.”

Grace Harris celebrates her record-breaking hundred against Perth Scorchers. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

*******

The Brisbane Heat star and proud Queenslander had a rocky start to life as an international cricketer.

At 21, she received a shock call-up to an Australian tour of the UK as an injury replacement player.

Her parents had already committed to attending an army ceremony for Grace’s brother David, so were interstate when she boarded a plane bound for England.

“My sister and my mum took her to the airport and farewelled her,” Grace’s mother Maree said.

“If I remember correctly, when she got to England, that boofhead at 19 or whatever she was, she jumped in a cab at the airport, she caught a cab about two hours away with no idea how big a city she was going to.”

Grace Harris in 2008.

A 17-year-old Grace Harris. Picture: Sarah Keayes

Grace confirmed the two-hour taxi journey took place after a chauffer usually assigned to players was given the wrong day for her arrival.

“It was a fair way away from where we were staying,” she said.

“I just got in this cab and was like, ‘I dunno I have got to get there somehow. I suppose I’ll just catch a taxi’.

“Then when we rocked up and the CA cab charge card came out, or they paid for it, and I was like, ‘that’s about 500 pounds’.

“I saw 300 tick over and I thought, ‘I hope we’re just around the corner’. I actually had no idea where we were going. I just said ‘can we go to this hotel?’ and the cab driver was like, ‘are you sure?’”

******

Harris’ first taste of international cricket was fleeting.

She played six T20s on the 2015 tour of the UK, then five across January and March the following year.

The now 30-year-old would be selected for five one-day internationals later in 2016, then spend almost six years in the wilderness.

“I was basically just like a gap filler,” she said.

“I was just there to make up the numbers, kind of. I was picked on potential. Not actual skill set or actually dominating domestic cricket.

“It was like, ‘you might be the next best thing so we’ll give you a contract or we’ll give you a game’. That’s what it felt like.”

Grace Harris takes a wicket against South Africa in 2016. Picture: Mark Evans

Maree recalls: “She’s had a lot of disappointments with being told, ‘you’re almost ready, you’re almost back, we’re looking at you’. I personally now think that’s a lot of hogwash.”

Harris next featured for Australia in January, 2022, when she was rushed into the Ashes squad after an injury to Beth Mooney.

Boy, had times changed from her first experience wearing the green and gold.

“Recently coming back in, you get given roles. You know exactly what you’re picked for,” she said.

“You know exactly when you’re coming in, what’s expected of you. There’s a lot of stuff that is a lot different to when I was first in the program.”

*******

Harris has been knocked down many times in her cricket career.

But through selection snubs and form slumps, she has remained true to the Grace Harris Aussie cricket fans can’t seem to get enough of.

Put simply, she doesn’t know any other way.

Her resilience is a trait which was fostered on the street in front of her parents’ home in Oxley, a suburb of Brisbane.

Grace and her three siblings lived what many consider a quintessential Queensland upbringing, spending hours outside playing sports including league, rugby, soccer and cricket.

The neighbourhood kids didn’t care about gender or age.

They all just wanted to win.

And it meant Grace took her fair share of blows.

Grace Harris has become one of Aussie cricket’s most-beloved players. Picture: Nigel Hallett

“The kids over the road were big boys and they had rugby league going on on our front footpath,” Maree said.

“They would slam my girls into the ground and if they came upstairs going ‘mum, I got hurt’, I would say, ‘I told you if you join the game, be prepared for the pain.

“Don’t cry to me afterwards, you joined the game’. And they would go straight back out.”

Grace remembers being “karate kicked” during willing soccer matches.

The intensity was similar at family gatherings.

“We gathered in my mum’s yard at least once a week with cousins and there were always more boys than girls,” Maree said.

“But nobody ever thought my girls were girls. They were tackled very hard in rugby league, they were bowled at with full pace by the nephews. They never spent any time indoors.

“We had a patch in our backyard. Our trampoline was jumped on for a little bit and then it became the (wicketkeeper). The patch in front of it was set as hard as concrete from tapping bats on it.

“And it remained that way for a long time, grass didn’t grow on it. Neighbourhood kids would join in for games in our yard. They’d play for sheep stations.”

********

Grace is one of four children who were raised in Brisbane’s southwest and played alongside her sister Laura at Brisbane Heat.

Her brother David and eldest sister Eliza live in nearby Ipswich, where Grace is renovating her first home.

That house has become a labour of love for Maree and her husband Jim, who have taken charge while Grace has been overseas playing for Australia, in England’s The Hundred and the inaugural season of India’s Women’s Premier League.

“Please say she has slept there once so far,” Maree said.

“One night and I keep getting left a list of instructions to get quotes on screens and quotes on a security door and quotes on this.

“It has become a part-time job for my husband and I and we are maintaining a yard and plants she has planted. We’re mowing.

“It is going to be one day a lovely house and she had her 30th birthday there with the cricket girls and family just to show off her place she owns that she’s not living in.”

Grace Harris playing in India’s Women’s Premier League. Picture: Pankaj Nangia/Getty Images

********

Grace’s larger-than-life personality is not a front for the cameras.

As she says, she doesn’t know any way but to be who she is — for better or worse.

“I can understand if I am not taken seriously or I can understand if people think I’m just a hack or just casual about cricket or don’t care, whatever,” she said.

“But I can’t really control what they think. I don’t know how to better express myself to make them like me, because I don’t want to change. It’s just not me.”

Maree said the cricketer who has endeared herself to WBBL and Aussie sporting fans is the same person she has known and loved for three decades.

“She’s funny. She speaks out, without a lot of thought at times, which her family is very used to,” Maree said.

“They know sometimes that filter is very much off. But everybody just adores her. My sisters, all her cousins, they can’t get enough of her. She’s somebody who’s always upbeat.

“She’s not a debbie downer. She’s just easy to live with. As long as she’s fed, watered, her dog is walked, the world is good.”

Grace bought her dalmatian Dorrie with one of her first cricket paycheques after years of hassling Maree and Jim for a dog.

“She wanted a dalmatian dog from when she was three and I wouldn’t buy one. I said, ‘no, never owning a dog’,” Maree said.

“She bought her dalmatian that she had always wanted and now I am left minding it majority of the time while she’s on the road.”

Dorrie is named after an elderly neighbour who Grace formed a close bond with as a child.

*********

Harris’ kitbag is full of burgers.

She has the Zinger Stacker, Zinger Burger, the McCrispy and the Cheeseburger.

Taking inspiration from New Zealand cricket legend and current England Test coach Brendon McCullum, she decided to take a unique approach to naming her bats.

McCullum would famously name his after racehorses, so Harris went for something close to her heart.

“At the moment I have got Zinger Stacker which is what I finished the innings with the other day (against Perth Scorchers in WBBL09),” she said.

“Zinger Burger because it’s just slightly lighter than Zinger Stacker but pretty much the same profile of bat.

“I’ve got cheeseburger which is a light one. Outside of that I have just been given two new bats which I have yet to name. McCrispy is one of them and then the other two I need names for.”

Grace Harris is batting…#WBBL09pic.twitter.com/03JfN2Xnad

— Nic Savage (@nic_savage1) October 22, 2023

🗣️ "I need a new bat... nah, stuff it. I'll hit it anyway"

Absolute gold from Grace Harris 😂 #WBBL09pic.twitter.com/ALTwrJOWRH

— Weber Women's Big Bash League (@WBBL) October 22, 2023

Harris went viral after launching a six with a broken bat — McCrispy — during her record-breaking innings of 136 not out against the Scorchers in October.

Incredibly, the bat was fixed a few days later and Harris plans to use it again.

“It’s a great bat. I love it. It’s got a good middle on it,” she said.

Grace Harris’ bat snaps in two. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

**********

Harris is self-aware enough to know she isn’t the type of sportsperson cricket traditionalists would enjoy.

She would love to finish her career with a baggy green, but concedes the slower pace of test cricket just isn’t for her.

“I would love to actually earn one,” she said.

“But I can’t see myself ever having to block and leave balls because that’s the most fun thing to do or that’s the way you’re going to win the game, by not getting out.

“I haven’t really grown up on that kind of cricket so I can’t say that that is what drives me.”

Harris with Aussie teammates Beth Mooney and Jess Jonassen. Picture: Steve Pohlner

**********

It may be modesty, or just her happy-go-lucky nature, but Harris appears genuinely oblivious to her growing popularity.

Instead, she describes herself as “polarising”.

Maree adds: “There’s no pretence. She has no hidden agendas. What you see is what you get. She’s funny as.

“I have a sister who is very prim and proper who often says, ‘Grace could you just tell me what I look like with a bit more of a filter in there?’ No (chance).”

Outspoken, loud and entertaining.

Grace Harris has it in spades.

And her second coming as a star of the WBBL and international cricketer could not have been better timed.

Originally published as Grace Harris: Brisbane Heat, Australian batter on her rise to stardom in WBBL and staying true to herself