Cricket/ Ashes Tour: Steve Harmison was answering questions in the members' pavilion of the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday, but as polished and occasionally insightful as his comments were, they were not what caught the attention. It was his hands.

They ran nervously through his hair, flicked across his face or folded together as he answered questions about his struggles at the Champions Trophy. Harmison's fingers trembled and his eyes darted to his inquisitors, the SCG outfield and to the plaques and photographs adorning the walls. For a formidable fast bowler, once lauded as the world's most dangerous, it was a performance verging on meek.

Having begun the last Ashes series by slicing the Australia captain Ricky Ponting's face with a vicious bouncer, thus setting England's tone of matching and surpassing their opponents' aggression, here he offered only an apology for that same ball.

"That's unfortunate, that," Harmison said. "That's probably one of the biggest regrets I had from that whole series. It wasn't handled as best we could have. As a bowler and as a person I am disappointed with myself about the way it came about. I didn't realise the extent of the injury until I was back at my mark. By then it was too late.

"As much as I am a fast bowler and the ball does come out of your hand at decent speeds, and the ball does bounce and it tends to sting, nobody likes to see anybody get hurt. I respect the bloke for what he is," he added.

At that moment, you wondered how a man whose physical presence has terrified the world's best batsmen could appear so meek. That, though, is part and parcel of the complex package Harmison brings to the England team, invoking awe and guffaws in equal measure, sometimes in the same spell.

Last summer, at Old Trafford against Pakistan in particular, Harmison was in the kind of form that has prompted many to label him the world's most dangerous fast bowler. But more recently, on Indian pitches not conducive to his mode of bang-it-in bowling, the Durham man was dropped from England's final Champions Trophy match after a series of performances that ranged from the indifferent to the intolerable.

A similar slide in form from any other bowler would prompt howls of concern from their coach, but in the case of the enigmatic Harmison, Duncan Fletcher knows better. He has seen this before, and remains confident that Harmison will still produce the kind of frightening spells that leave indelible marks on the faces of Australian captains.

Harmison, likewise, does not appear outwardly concerned.

"I feel I don't take (cricket) serious enough to get heated up about it," he said. "I'm quite laid back in that respect, probably because my preferred sport was football, and to be honest, it probably still is. This is a job, and because it's about that I perform better, because I know I've got to be focused. It's not one of the jobs where you think, '**** me, here we go again'. There are worse things you could be doing. I do get a lot of joy out of the game."

Harmison was presumably hard pressed to find much to be joyous about on his last tour of Australia with England, taking only nine wickets at an average of over 50 in four Tests as the home side strode to victory. On that occasion, Harmison was denied the chance to bowl in Brisbane, the site of the first Test this series, and probably Australia's most pace-friendly pitch in light of the deceleration of the Waca playing surface in Perth.

"I don't think it's any less exciting, to be honest," he said of touring Australia four years on. "Coming to Australia after what happened in England, there's obviously a little bit more of a spotlight on us. Hopefully, it will be exactly the same as it was last summer in England."

He also believes the strong team mentality of England's bowlers that won the Ashes, where no individual was relied upon disproportionately, has survived. "We hunt as a pack. When we won the Ashes, it was because we had four fast bowlers and Ashley Giles. We won it as a group. Warney got 40 wickets and bowled exceptionally well and he didn't win the series. The best we did was 22 or 23. We all chipped in. We did it as a group."

• Guardian Service