RYAN Harris lost his mum Gai to cancer four years ago but she is there, close to his heart, on every step of his extraordinary cricket journey.

In a touching and poignant gesture, the tough Australian fast bowler rubs his left chest at the start of every bowling spell as he throws himself into the ferocity of battle. It is where the Queenslander has inked a simple tattoo – Mum – beneath her Virgo star sign.

Gai never got to see her boy become an Ashes hero, or even play for his country, but Harris knows how much it would have meant to her.

"Losing her was so tragic and I think about her every time I'm out in the middle. I always tap the star sign tattooed on my chest before I bowl," Harris told The Courier-Mail last night.

"After I did well in Perth, Justin Langer (Australian Test legend and current batting coach) sat me down in the dressing room and told me how proud my mum would have been at what I had just achieved."

Harris went to England and was heartened when his mum appeared to be given a positive bill of health but she died suddenly only three weeks after he returned from the UK.

"Halfway through her treatment she had a test to see if it had cleared and everything seemed to be going well but she died soon after I got home," Harris said. "Mum used to love watching me play cricket. When I was playing for South Australia, she used to work in the city and always ducked down to watch me play when she could sneak out of work or finish early."

Despite battling a chronic knee injury which caused him to consider ending his first-class career, Harris has become a ray of light in an Australian team that has had plenty of struggles recently. He has taken 20 wickets at 19.85 from four Tests and 41 wickets at 16.12 from 17 one-day internationals.