As Bradman's team broke up in the 1950s due to retirements, Harvey became Australia's senior batsman, and was named as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1954, in recognition of his feat in scoring more than 2,000 runs during the 1953 tour of England.

At any rate, Craig fell ill the following season, but Harvey had moved interstate, so Richie Benaud was promoted to the captaincy ahead of him.

In the Second Test at Lord's in 1961, when Benaud was injured, Harvey led the team in the "Battle of the Ridge" on an erratic surface, grinding out a hard-fought victory.

[1] The family lived in Broken Hill, where Horace was a miner, before moving to Sydney, and finally to Melbourne in 1926, where they settled in the inner northern industrial suburb of Fitzroy.

In conditions conducive to producing batsmen rather than bowlers, they played cricket using a tennis ball on cobblestones or a marble rebounding from the backyard pavement.

[23] Harvey had scored a solitary run when he hit a ball to Len Hutton at short leg, who dived forwards and grabbed it with both hands before dropping it.

"[40] The pair launched a counterattack, with Miller taking the lead and shielding Harvey from Jim Laker, as the young batsman was struggling against the off breaks that were turning away from him.

[41] This allowed Australia to seize the initiative, with Harvey joining the counterattack during the next over, hitting consecutive boundaries against Laker, the second of which almost cleared the playing area.

[48][49] On the final afternoon, Harvey was at the crease and got off the mark by hitting the winning boundary in the second innings as Australia successfully completed a Test world record run chase of 3/404 in less than one day.

On a crumbling, sticky pitch, the Australians were having extreme difficulty with the spin of Hugh Tayfield and faced their first Test defeat against South Africa for 39 years.

[63] The tourists looked set for victory and retention of The Ashes at the start of the final day, but time-wasting and defiant defence from the English batsmen left Australia a target of 177 in the last two hours.

[64] At that point, English medium-pacer Trevor Bailey began bowling with the wicket-keeper more than two metres down the leg side to deny the Australians an opportunity to hit the ball, but the umpires did not penalise them as wides.

[64] English wicket-keeper Godfrey Evans said that the tourists "were absolutely livid" and he sympathised with them,[65] saying that "they were right" in claiming that Bailey's bowling was "the worst kind of negative cricket" and that he had "cheated [them] of victory".

[8] This was followed by a low scoring Second Test in Sydney when Australia were 4/77 needing 223 to win on a poor wicket against the lethal pace of Frank Tyson and Brian Statham.

Harvey stood firm while Tyson scattered the stumps of his partners, and he farmed the strike ruthlessly, protecting the tailenders and counter-attacking the England fast bowlers, relying on the cut shot and clipping anything on his pads through the leg side.

It was an English summer dominated by off spinner Jim Laker and his Surrey teammate Tony Lock, who repeatedly dismantled the tourists on dusty spinning pitches specifically tailored to their cater for them.

New South Wales, chasing 161 to win, slumped to 7/70 when Craig (suffering tonsillitis) defied medical orders, left his hospital bed, and came out to bat.

[8] Some players remained resentful of Craig's dubious elevation ahead of Harvey during the 1957–58 tour of South Africa but appreciated that he had not promoted himself and that he was fair and open to input from teammates.

Ten years of making time for cricket had disrupted his working life, so he was contemplating a move to South Africa, the homeland of his wife, Iris.

Consequently, Harvey received a job offer to work as a sales supervisor for a glass manufacturer in Sydney, so he moved to New South Wales and gave up the Victorian captaincy.

[8] In Dhaka, East Pakistan (now in Bangladesh), Harvey made 96 on a matting pitch over rough ground in the First Test, mastering the medium pace of Fazal Mahmood, while his teammates struggled to score.

This included most of the first month of the tour; Benaud hurt his shoulder in the first match against Worcestershire, and spent most of the next three weeks either not bowling or travelling to London away from his men for specialist treatment.

"[111] Benaud returned for the Third Test, when England levelled the series despite twin half-centuries of 73 and 53 from Harvey, who top-scored in both innings[112] on a dustbowl in a match that lasted only three days.

[4][14][62][114] In the second half of the tour, Harvey added centuries against Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire and took his career best bowling fugres of 4/8 against Middlesex to help set up a ten-wicket win.

"[4] Following the retirement of Sir Donald Bradman, he was seen as Australia's leading batsman, noted by critics for a similar ability to change the mood of matches with his attacking play.

[2][4] Away from the field, Harvey had a quiet and unassuming manner, in complete contrast to his dynamic batting, and his aversion to smoking and drinking set him apart from the prevailing cricket culture of his period.

[2] From late 1958 when Norm O'Neill made his Test debut until Harvey's retirement in 1963, the duo formed a formidable pairing in the covers, helping to restrict opposition batsmen from scoring in the region.

He attributed the wins to weak opponents, stating "No I don't think they're up to the world standard they were years ago" and that the 1980s West Indies team were far superior.

[130] Harvey vociferously called for Shane Warne and Mark Waugh to be banned from cricket after it was revealed that they accepted money from bookmakers to give pitch and weather information and the ACB privately fined them.

At the time, Greenish was only 16 years old and Harvey 21, and their relationship became the subject of controversy when her father told the media that he would object to the couple's engagement until his daughter turned 18.