Chris Harrison is a professional cricket coach currently coaching at Hampton School, Middlesex. He has had a lot of experience playing and coaching and is one of the most highly regarded coaches around. When he was younger he played ‘All the sports’. At school he tried his hand at tennis, basketball and even admitted that he ‘would have liked to become a professional football player’. However, over the years his cricketing abilities seemed to become stronger and stronger. He practised every aspect of the game; ‘bowling, batting, wicketkeeping and even left handed...’ as a kid and kept developing into an even better player. In his own words, he ‘used to be down at the nets every day’, developing his game while having a good time.

He attended Lytham St Anne’s High School in Lancashire and played cricket in the Lancashire Schools System in his adolescent years. At this stage he was playing a very high quality of cricket and soon in his late teens found himself a scholarship to Worcester university courtesy of Worcestershire County Cricket Club. During this period he had the opportunity to travel the world and play cricket while doing so. He went on tours to South Africa, the Far East and had the opportunity to live in Perth for 6 months playing cricket every day, what he described as an 'amazing experience'. He didn’t leave the university with a professional contract but went back up to Lancashire to trial with the 2nd XI. After playing with the side for a brief period of time Chris decided that he was going to look into other career options with cricket. 

In 2005 Chris moved down to London and started coaching at Shrewsbury House School. 3 years later in 2008, he had the idea of running his own cricket business and proposed a plan to Hampton about what he could do with them. At this stage video analysis of cricket was very new and Chris was one of the first to use the technology to analyse cricket. Hampton accepted him and he has been training students of all abilities since.

Chris’ ‘claim to fame’ was being ‘mates’ and playing with the great Freddie Flintoff himself. They spent a lot of time together during his Lancashire Schools career and even played at the same cricket club- St Anne’s CC. During this time he also played with Ex-England footballer Phil Neville, who he says could have ‘most likely gone on to play for England’. As a kid and teenager he looked up to all the Lancashire and England players; ‘Mike Atherton, Neil Fairbrother, Graeme Hick, Alec Stewart’, the list goes on... In his playing career he played with and against some of England’s most memorable cricketers. He had encounters with batsman Mark Chilton and even off-spinner Graeme Swann.

Despite not making it as a playing professional for a long period of time, Chris has thrived in the coaching industry and helped many budding cricketers enhance their games over the years.

Tanmay Thanawalla, Hampton School