At around 4.55pm on Tuesday, Sam Harper raised his bat with a smile after bringing up a back-to-the-wall century on Australia A debut against India A in Puducherry. Five minutes later, at stumps, Todd Murphy, one of his great mates at Victoria, warmly welcomed him back with applause and a bear hug.
After he had walked out at 104 for 5 in the afternoon, Harper lifted Australia A to 282 for 7 on the first day of the four-day game. A job well done. More specifically for Harper, it was a job well done at the right time. With Josh Inglis in doubt for the upcoming Test series in South Africa because of a finger fracture, Harper has put his hand up should Australia need him.
After enjoying his most productive Sheffield Shield season ever - he made 677 runs in 11 games at an average of 35.63 - Harper showed that he could cut it against India's spinners as well, that too at their own backyard. Eighty-one of his 101 on the day came off offspinner Tanush Kotian, left-arm fingerspinner Shams Mulani, and part-time legspinner Shaik Rasheed.
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."
"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
This is Harper's first official game in India, but he has had success in the subcontinent more recently, though in a different format. In the Lanka Premier League (LPL) T20s in July-August, when he won the title with Galle Gallants, he had a strike rate of 145.83 against spin, the highest for an overseas batter (for a minimum of 90 balls faced). And among all batters, only Charith Asalanka (214) scored more runs against spin than Harper's 210.
At 29, more than 13 years after he made his first-class debut for Victoria, Harper has unlocked a new dimension as a batter across formats. In the 2025-26 BBL, he was the third-highest run-getter with 381 runs in ten innings at a strike rate of 155.51 for Melbourne Stars.
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.
"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."
Harper warmed the bench in the first four-dayer, but used the time on the sidelines to bounce ideas off Peter Handscomb, who has played some remarkable innings in the subcontinent in the past, and Murphy, who bagged a match haul of seven wickets last week.
"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."
While Josh Phillipe kept wicket for Australia A in the first four-dayer, Harper has the gloves for the second. With the ball expected to turn more and perhaps keep low in Puducherry as the game wears on, Harper hopes to draw confidence from his training sessions with Australia A head coach Tim Paine.
"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.