Harper jumped across off, exposing his stumps to the first ball he faced from Kotian, but paddled him away to the right of square leg with supreme control.
When you put a good ball away, it messes with the mind of the bowler, however good he might be.
With a variety of sweeps and proactive trips down the track, Harper also messed with the lengths of Kotian and the fields of India A captain Devdutt Padikkal.
“I think just not having or letting the spinners settle over here was a plan going into the game,” Harper said after stumps. “So yeah, any time I felt like I could use my feet to get to the pitch of the ball, I was going to try and put them under pressure and get them off their length.
“Yeah, also manipulate their field a bit. I thought the left-armer [Mulani] specifically was bowling quite well. So use a sweep or two here to just put him under a little bit of pressure and take a risk and then get the field you want. And hopefully you can dial back the risk from there.”
All of those runs in the BBL and the LPL were scored from the top order, and he also played predominantly at the top for Victoria in challenging conditions in the 2025-26 Sheffield Shield. But in Puducherry, he showed he could be a potent point of difference in the middle order, that too in foreign conditions.
“Having Pete and Todd both here as big team-mates who have spent a bit of time here on tour, it’s been nice to touch off”
Sam Harper on the time spent with Pete Handscomb and Todd Murphy
“To be honest, I think we’ll see in the next five-ten-twenty years of one-day cricket that the batting order is not too dissimilar to a bowling order where blokes bowl at different times and bat at different times,” Harper said. “I think if you want to be adaptable in this day and age, you’ve got to be willing to do that. So no, I’m honestly happy to bat wherever there’s a chance to help win the game for the team.
“It’s exciting to see people like Sammy Konstas and stuff at 19 and 20. And then on the flip side, when you are 29 approaching 30, you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of your game. So yeah, it’s nice to get this opportunity when you feel like you know how you want to play and how you want to go about it.”
“Having Pete and Todd both here as big team-mates who have spent a bit of time here on tour, it’s been nice to touch off,” Harper said. “Todd, as a spinner, from what he’s thinking… Then obviously Pete, who has had success in these conditions, to touch his brain. I felt like my plans were fairly clear, but [it’s] always going to be learning on the fly over here.”
“Paine has been fantastic,” Harper said. “I think anyone who’s spent some time in this A group with him over the last couple of years will feel that he completely backs you in to play your way into your strengths. And yeah, that’s one thing I really enjoyed last week not playing. We were able to have three or four really good [catch-ups] and just pick his wicketkeeping brain over in these conditions. So, he’s been awesome, not only for me, but you can just tell around this group.”
If Harper supplements his gritty hundred in front of the stumps with a good shift behind it, he could well strengthen his chances of breaking into the senior squad.
Deivarayan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at Cricinfo