Welcome to being me: The story of Michael Carberry - England batsman, cancer survivor, artist

SAM MORSHEAD: Carberry’s art is nothing without the story of how it came to be, and he weaves an extraordinary tale of survival and perseverance, a cricketing allegory of what it means not to give up, his very own rage against the dying of the light

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Brisbane. November 22, 2013.

Michael Carberry steadies himself, slightly crouched in his crease, hips loose. He raises his bat and stares into the middle-distance, muffling the roar of 40,000 Australians inside the Gabba. As he does so, Mitchell Johnson turns on his heels and begins his approach.

Carberry’s mind does not wander. It cannot. Not with Johnson and his five-and-three-quarter ounce bouncing bombs whispering in his ears at 95 miles-per-hour.

Not given the extreme risk to his life. Not while he is batting on blood-thinners.

***

Fast forward five-and-a-half years. The Cricketer meets Carberry on a sunny Monday in May, provisionally on the premise that the discussion will centre around his art exhibition, which is due to open in Kensington this month.

But Carberry’s art is nothing without the story of how it came to be, and over two-and-a-half hours the former England batsman weaves an extraordinary tale of survival and perseverance, a cricketing allegory of what it means not to give up, his very own rage against the dying of the light.

This is a man, let’s not forget, who has twice conquered potentially debilitating conditions - first blood clots on his lungs, then stomach cancer - to enjoy an 18-year playing career and represent his country, opening the batting in an Ashes series in Australia.

His fight, and it does not seem hyperbolic to describe Carberry’s lived experience as such, given the multiple barriers he has either hurdled or barged headlong through during his 38 years, has left him with a remarkable singularity of purpose.

“Welcome to being me,” he says repeatedly during our long conversation, referencing those constant challenges - racism, nepotism and character clashes in addition to ill-health - that he has faced. But he is not bitter.

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Michael Carberry down the years (clockwise from top left): at Surrey, Kent, Hampshire and Leicestershire

“God gives his toughest fights to his strongest soldiers. He would never put anything on my plate that I couldn’t handle.”

And that plate has been stacked higher than a freshman’s at a £6.99 all you can eat buffet.

Carberry comes from modest beginnings in Croydon. The son of Neville, a former BP manager and taxi driver, and Maria, a midwife, he did not enjoy the luxury of the private education shared by so many of his colleagues at both county and international level.

He attended Sir John Rigby College in Bromley - a downtrodden institution whose headteacher was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing £500,000 from the school’s coffers - and relied on his father’s love of cricket to introduce him to the game.

Neville used to carry the bags of the West Indies players in Guyana and was a founding member of the famous Old Castletonians, a nomadic club side in south London, where a young Carberry first picked up bat and ball.

Back home, he would set up his own practice sessions in the family’s front room, trying to pick the gaps between table legs.

“I did break a couple of vases,” he remembers. “Mum got the big shout out: “Michael!”

Neville, a lover of left-handed batsmen, was delighted to discover his son had taken the mould and he would ferry Carberry from training session to trial.

"I had to fight every day - either you’re fighting on the pitch bat versus ball or fighting to gain respect in the dressing room or fighting to overturn some ignorant people"

At nine, he was spotted by Surrey and in 1998, at the age of 17, he was offered a contract.

Championed by Adam Hollioake and Alec Stewart, the young batsman was seen as a glowing prospect in a squad bristling with international talent.

Carberry had already been on an England Under 19s tour and a career in cricket seemed a viable option, but his parents were not immediately convinced.

“It was a massive decision as a family,” he says. “It took a lot of persuading my parents.

“I hadn’t quite finished my A Levels yet and mum and dad were desperate for me to do that.”

Surrey’s director of cricket development, Mike Edwards, visited the family home, along with Carberry’s agent Allen Blackford.

“Mike had to break it down to my mum and dad,” Carberry recalls. “‘If he gets injured we have physios, people to glue him back together’.”

Convince his parents they did, but while he was thrilled to share a dressing room with his heroes - “the first time Graham Thorpe walked in, I was just sat there with my mouth open” - the playing riches at The Oval meant gametime was limited.

How do you break into a first team of Stewart, Thorpe, Ramprakash, Hollioake, Hollioake, Ward, Benjamin, Bicknell and Saqlain, anyway?

“The first year or so I felt out of my depth,” he says.

“I wasn’t a naturally confident kid, I guess my confidence grew over time, with runs and experience.

“You were seen and not heard back then. We had a lot of seniority. The demographic of the dressing room was very different.”

Three years later, in 2002, after seven first-class appearances, he left for a fresh start at Kent.

His first Championship hundred soon came - “it just clicked that day, the bat felt the right size, the floor was nice and flat and I wasn’t in the right-hander’s footholes the whole time, everything felt right” - and the following season he made two more.

Carberry’s mind whirrs at the chance to remember those innings, as it does when he is asked to recall most major moments of his on-field career.

I ask him if there is a reason for that.

“It’s all about the journey,” he says. “My journey was very different to a lot of other guys I’ve shared dressing rooms with.

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“It definitely wasn’t silver spoon stuff. I had to fight every day - either you’re fighting on the pitch bat versus ball or fighting to gain respect in the dressing room or fighting to overturn some ignorant people.”

During his time at Kent, Carberry says he was stopped by the local police seven times in a two-week period, a sequence which he believes to have been an example of racial profiling. Remarkably, one instance took place outside the St Lawrence Ground gates.

“There weren’t too many black guys around there at the time,” he says.

“It’s only because one of them was security at the game, took my driving licence and saw my name, that he said ‘hang on a minute, don’t you open the batting for Kent?’.

“I said yes and he let me go. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I hadn’t broken any speed laws, I wasn’t drunk.”

On another occasion, Carberry had gone to a local fast-food outlet for a burger on a day off when he was pulled over.

“It’s sat there getting cold in the passenger’s seat while I talk to the police. They flashed me down, told me to get out of the car; I had to give over my details, who am I, where do I live, what am I doing around here and this and this,” he says.

“Maybe if that had happened a year previously I would have got myself locked up but I think I stayed calm, I answered the questions… there’s no point giving it attitude, even though I was probably well within my rights.

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Carberry at the wicket during the 2013-14 Ashes

“You don’t feel great about it when it happens but I thank my parents, they always told me to be proud of who I am.

“My family had to write a letter to politely ask them to stop and leave me alone.”

Carberry’s experiences with racism go beyond those police stops.

As one of very few black children, sometimes the only black child, in Surrey age-group trials, he often felt marginalised or overlooked. Throughout his career, he says, he has had to “break down the door” of prejudice within coaching structures.

“You had to fight certain ignorances. From age nine it became a regular part of life,” he says.

“The rise of West Indies’ cricket team went some way to change people’s views but there was some overspill, and there still is. It’s just the way it is, unfortunately.”

He can recount stories of racial abuse from the stands, too.

“I’ve had people in the crowd… I remember at Kent there was a guy sounding off, I parted the boards and had to get him ejected,” he says.

“These people are always brave when your back is turned. Your back is to them and you’re looking at the game. I started to see a trend. They would never do it to your face. It’s not the way I was raised, if I had something to say I would say it to your face, and you best believe.

“Who’s more the man here?

“The greatest way I could respond was to go out there and whack a hundred, and that’s why every hundred I made sticks in the memory. It was the biggest fingers up to those people, without putting my fingers up!”

It is more than just ignorance that Carberry has had to overcome, though. At times, his own body has been fighting against him as well.

It was in early 2010 that Carberry began showing signs of breathlessness at even the slightest hint of heavy cardio work, which for a man who had dedicated quite as much time to ensuring peak physical fitness – going so far as to train with his friend and GB sprinter Donna Fraser - made little sense.

"There’s a lot more riding on it for me. One, my age - I’m 34. Two, I’m on blood-thinners against Mitchell Johnson. You could call that slightly crazy. If there’s a reason to keep your head still and watch the ball, that’s it"

By now he had been at Hampshire for seven years, established himself as an integral first-team player and earned an England Test call-up for a tour to Bangladesh, during which he made his international debut.

He was a homeowner - “there are guys who say when they became fathers, that was their turning point, but in my mind I became a fully-fledged adult when I got that flat” - and had hauled himself back into his county first XI after being dropped in 2009.

But everything was not alright.

“It started to raise eyebrows, people starting to think I’m not fit enough. It adds pressure,” he says. “I’m not meaning to be out of breath, but the heart rate monitor isn’t lying - it says I’m 225 (bpm) and I’ve walked from over there.

“I was always in the nets or in the gym or being active, yet in warm-ups I was hunched over, short of breath, gasping.”

Still, Carberry managed to find a way to score runs - 1,221 of them in the 2010 Championship at an average a shade below 47 - and he was summoned for an England Performance Pathway trip to Australia.

Then, three days before he was due to get on a plane, Carberry’s world unravelled.

Tests at Loughborough revealed two blood clots on his lungs, one of which had lodged itself in a major artery.

“I was very close to having a heart attack,” he says.

“It hit home when I got the news and mum was in the room at the same time. I told her and she started to cry. That’s when it became real for me, this is not a cut finger or a bruised knee. This is serious.”

Carberry spent three weeks in hospital in Southampton under heavy medication. There he finally had time to take stock of the series of events which had led to him resting in that place.

“Six months ago I was a Test cricketer, achieving my ultimate dream and now I’m in hospital fighting for my life,” he remembers thinking.

“Initially I felt numb. There was a little bit of disbelief. You’re angry, you’re upset.”

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Carberry was placed on blood-thinners to aid his condition, drugs which put the patient at substantially increased risk of haemorrhaging. Medical advice to anyone in such a position is always to avoid contact sport, or any activity which risks impact injury and bruising.

Opening the batting in an Ashes Test in Australia probably ranks among such activities. But that is later in the story.

Carberry is still taking blood-thinners to this day and did so throughout the remaining eight years of his professional career, which, in his own words “is very dangerous to do”.

“It boiled down to the sheer will to succeed. That can override a lot,” he says.

“Look at other examples in sport - Paralympians, Gary Mabbutt - the ex-Spurs footballer who was a type one diabetic - there are people who have had long-term medical issues and, as long as it’s managed, it’s possible.

“If I was a batsman who played in fear of getting hit by the ball, aged 31 I probably would have packed up.

“You have to be courageous. That is the hallmark of batting.”

Carberry’s mother and agent did not initially agree with his decision “but I had to back my god-given talent, my reflexes, my training”.

The ECB and Hampshire came to his aid, putting in place the necessary safety procedures, while kit manufacturer Ayrtek commissioned a special helmet to give Carberry extra protection.

“We had not yardstick of other cricketers who had been on blood-thinners. They would just pull you out and say: ‘you’ve got to retire’. I suppose I’m one of one,” he says.

“I had to somehow redefine myself again, accept the athlete I am.”

Carberry and Blackford did their best to keep the blood-thinner story quiet at the time, though it did later emerge in interviews around his Ashes call-up in 2013, for fear that opponents could use it as a weakness.

“If people know that hitting you in the swede is going to do you some serious damage…”

"As much as I held her, hugged her, told her it was going to be alright, she just kept crying and crying. The neighbours came out because they could hear"

Blood tests became a routine part of life, Carberry had to learn how to inject himself on a daily basis, he quit alcohol and had to substantially alter his diet. His world had changed considerably yet, critically, cricket remained at its epicentre.

“I would do it all over again. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment. Yes, the results were disappointing, yes, we could have done a few things differently but as a batsman I always wanted a bowler on the top of his game.

“Could I do something special against one the best there’s been at the height of his powers. I would never sit here and claim I took Mitchell Johnson down.

“There’s a lot more riding on it for me. One, my age - I’m 34. Two, I’m on blood-thinners against Mitchell Johnson. You could call that slightly crazy. If there’s a reason to keep your head still and watch the ball, that’s it.

“You can imagine my mum at home sitting behind the sofa watching every ball, watching every bouncer whizz past my head at 93 or 94 miles per hour. She’s having kittens. All she wants to do is see me come home on the plane.”

It was not the last time during her son’s playing career that Maria might have feared for his life.

In 2016, Carberry had to tackle a whole new threat to his health.

In July, he missed a Championship game against Warwickshire after complaining of feeling unwell only to be told the following week that he had a cancerous tumour in his stomach.

He was 36 years old.

“I was speaking to a friend and she asked me how I felt when I got the news and I likened it to someone turning on the mute button on the TV. You can see people’s mouths moving but you can’t hear anything.

“You just go deaf.

“I felt numb. Someone just turned the sound off.

“I didn’t really show any emotion about it. The hardest day was telling my mum, and that’s something that for the first year in recession still haunted me - that experience of driving from London, sitting down with mum and her breaking down for about four hours.

“As much as I held her, hugged her, told her it was going to be alright, she just kept crying and crying. The neighbours came out because they could hear.”

Surgeons cut Carberry open in six places to remove the tumour, and complications during surgery left him in hospital for a lot longer than expected.

“You’re not worrying about cricket anymore, now it’s about life,” he says. “Is this my life now? Is this thing going to come back? There were some dark days and I found peace when I started to draw.”

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Carberry's realism exhibition launches in Kensington in June

It had been nearly 20 years since Carberry had last picked up a pencil, but his touch had not deserted him, and when he wasn’t drawing he was reading up on the art on the internet and watching videos on YouTube.

A hobby originally intended to keep his mind from wandering onto the ‘what ifs’ has now become a vocation, and a steady trickle of commissions is now starting to come his way.

“Coming back from cancer, there is a lot of reflective time,” he says. “Sometimes that’s not a good thing. You go in and out of different emotions, you’re up one day and rock bottom the next.

“It (drawing) helped the healing part of things.

“To have a realistic possibility of living one life and having two dream jobs means to me that maybe I have been unlucky in some ways - ill health, for example - but in other ways I’ve been very lucky.

“To step into the world of art and make a career out of it is quite exciting.”

And so to today, and to a conversation taking place on a pair of rickety sofas in the Dulwich Cricket Club pavilion.

As The Cricketer leaves Carberry, he is heading onto the outfield, ready to pass on his experience to a group of 10 and 11-year-olds, whom he helps train as and when he can.

Most don’t know him as an England opener, or an artist, or a cancer survivor. Just coach. And coach has a lesson for them.

“As a generation of people now we’ve almost lost our base, natural human instincts. If we looked back to early mankind, what did we do? We were hunters, we protected at all costs. We’re now less resilient to things than ever before,” he says.

“If my back was against the wall, real life and death stuff, you either die or you try to live. If you have children and you see them underneath a car - are you going to stand there crying or try to lift the car?

“We are a lot stronger than we realise.

“If I push you to your absolute limits where you had to protect something so dear to you, that inner drive will come out. Sometimes it’s easy to just say ‘I’m done’.”

Carberry, inevitably, is not done yet.

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