My Story

by Michael Clarke

  On the field, my mind is strangely clear. Cricket has been my whole life, but now, when I am playing in a World Cup final, cricket means absolutely zero. I’m thinking that if I have to retire now to look after Dad, this might be my last match. So what? No more cricket. I might as well enjoy this game. Something in my head has switched off 90 per cent of the thoughts that usually spool out during a game. In this state of fear and fatalism, with so many parts of me numb, I play the final like a character in someone else’s video game. I’m there, but not there. Funnily, as it did in the semi-final, this detached mental state sort of helps my cricket.

  At the end of the afternoon, there are some fun and games with the umpires trying to get the match finished while the darkness is closing in, and we conclude it by celebrating on the field in the worst light I’ve ever known for a cricket game. It’s so bad that Symmo has to bowl some gentle lobs in the last over for the Sri Lankans to knock it about like pat-ball.

  None of that dulls our celebrations, but while I throw myself into it with the usual outward enthusiasm, half my mind is on getting home. Earlier in the World Cup, James Packer organised a boat to assist Cricket Australia, and after the final the team goes out on it to enjoy the moment and have a great time. It’s a World Cup, and we’ve won it. I get involved, on the surface anyway. I don’t want to dampen anyone else’s celebrations, so the only teammate I confide in is Andrew Symonds, who is also close to Dad.

  I can’t get home soon enough. From Sydney airport, I catch a taxi to my home in Lilli Pilli, in the southern suburbs. When I get there, Mum and Dad are in the driveway waiting for me. He looks his normal self, not sick at all.

  We hug. At first, we are too choked up to say anything.

  Mum goes into the house, leaving Dad and me to speak in the driveway. We spend about 30 minutes there. We have to talk before going through the normal motions of walking down the drive, opening the door, putting bags down, getting a glass of water. We just talk. He tells me that his specialist, Professor Harry Iland, has told him that they can’t guarantee he’ll still be around in 12 months’ time.

  Dad explains how he found out. He owns a tyre shop in Brookvale, and while he was working on the first floor he fell through some rotten floorboards. Thinking he’d broken a rib, he decided to just tough it out. Mum said to go to the doctor, but Dad, typically, refused. A week and a half later, he was still having trouble breathing, and when he collapsed in pain during dinner with Mum and Leanne, he finally gave in and went for X-rays. His rib wasn’t broken but they found two tumours in his chest and two more in his throat.

  ‘The luckiest thing was falling through that floor,’ he says. ‘Otherwise they mightn’t have found out.’

  I’m glad Leanne told me, even on the morning of a World Cup semi-final. That’s how close we are: family comes first. I wouldn’t have had her do it any other way.

  ‘Listen,’ Dad says, to put it into proportion. ‘I lost my dad to bowel cancer when I was five years old. You and I have had a lot of good years together. You’re 26. If my time is up, my time’s up.’

  Dad’s treatment takes place over a 12-month period. Leanne moves back in with him and Mum as the drugs and radiation begin to knock him around badly. He’s in and out of hospital for seven months of chemotherapy and then, after a month off, 30 consecutive days of radiation therapy. He’s always stoical and cares less about his own fate than he does about seeing young children as patients in the cancer ward, which hits him hard.

  During this period he loses a lot of muscle as well as his hair. It breaks my heart to see. His moustache, which he’s cultivated ever since he was in the navy, is gone too. In his old-school way, he says that losing his mo is the only thing he really cares about. He grew it as a sign of resistance against naval logic: the guards wouldn’t let him through the gate if he was unshaven, but would if he was growing a moustache. He was always tickled by that story, and the origin of the mo said a lot about who he is and his attitude to authority. I wonder where I get it from?

  Some months later, he comes to ask if he can borrow my shoes. He usually wears smaller shoes than I do, size 8s to my size 10s, but the pins and needles and swelling in his feet are so bad his normal shoes are compressing his toes. I happily give him as many pairs of shoes from my sponsors as he needs. ‘At least there’s an upside,’ he says. ‘Free shoes for life!’

  Dad’s cancer changes all of our lives. I’ve always loved spending time with him, but now I value every second in his company. He watches all of my cricket, and is typically crusty in his responses. It’s not often he will crow about anything I’ve achieved, and more likely he’ll say, ‘You should have made 200; what a shit shot to get out on when you’ve made 100!’ He won’t pump my tyres within earshot, but his mates tell me how proud he is of the effort I have put into my cricket for all these years. He’s proud of the results, but more than anything he feels a strong sense of justice when I am rewarded for all that hard work.

  Our relationship goes through a transition from father–son to mates. I start to go out with him for a beer with his friends, even when he says he’s too old for it or feeling too unwell, and I become part of that group. We have more in common as buddies as I get older, and in 2012, at my wedding, Dad will be my best man.

  By then, his cancer will have gone into remission. Or, I should say, his cancers. His lymphoma responds well to the chemo and radiotherapy in 2007 and 2008, and the tumours steadily shrink. On 21 May 2008, a day Dad regards as his ‘second’ birthday, Professor Iland calls to tell him the lymphoma is in remission. Even when it’s in remission, he still needs regular scans, and in 2011 he is diagnosed with cancer of the prostate. Fortunately, due to how frequently he’s getting scanned, they catch that early and he fights it off. But it’s an ever-present threat, and I know that I share that cancer gene with him.

  My first skin cancer is cut out in the early 2000s. I keep it quiet publicly, but it’s a matter of constant vigilance. Cricket is such a bad game to play if you have a susceptibility to skin cancer or any other skin condition. After Dad’s diagnosis, I decide to become more active in cancer prevention campaigns. I come out publicly about what I’ve been through, and do a lot of promotional work for the Cancer Council.

  As a cricketer, I can set some kind of example. I always wear long sleeves while fielding and often while batting, and never play without my collar turned up to protect my neck. I lather myself in sunblock, and wear a broad-brimmed floppy hat when I’m out in the field. The only exception to this is for a period after 2004, when I am so proud of my baggy green I can’t resist wearing it all the time. But by 2007, when I’m getting pre-cancerous lesions on my skin zapped off every few months, and when I meet so many old cricketers fighting serious sun damage, I go to the floppy hat whenever I’m fielding in the sun, other than for our team ritual of first session of an innings in the baggy green.

  Hard as it is to say it, Dad having cancer changes my outlook on life for the better. His condition also brings me closer to Leanne and Mum. Whenever I cop public criticism for my personality, I fall back on thoughts of my family; at those moments I think, I’m proud of the way my family brought me up, I’m proud of the values they taught me as a young boy. I cop plenty of smacks in the mouth, and deservedly sometimes, but thanks to the way my family raised me I know I’m not a bad person. Their love is my protection.

  Dad’s second cancer diagnosis kicks off a wretched year for the family’s health. In 2011, Leanne’s first baby, Byron, is born five weeks premature, and in the hours after his birth she starts to bleed internally. Her life is saved, but while she’s in hospital Dad also has to go in, to have a benign tumour cut out of his head. His Hodgkin’s lymphoma seems to be under control, but it’s a reminder of the risk that hovers over him. That same year, my Nan passes away, and my Pop has a heart attack and a stroke. And one day, I get another of those calls from Leanne.

  ‘It’s Mum. There’s something wrong with her head.’

  I rush to Sutherl
and Hospital, where Mum has been taken. She has had a cerebral haemorrhage and has to be rushed to the bigger and better equipped hospital at St George, 15 minutes away. I sit in the ambulance with her. I struggle to believe, on top of everything else, that this is happening to Mum. She is such a physically fit and busy person, I can’t imagine her being stopped in her tracks. Having been a hockey and netball player through her life and a regular at the Gymea gym, she is, in my eyes, a ball of athletic energy. But here she is, in the care of paramedics, and we don’t know what’s coming next. Like any son, I grew up thinking my mother is always there for me and expect her strength to be my foundation. Mum was the core of our family: making sure I was organised, fed, clothed and taken where I needed to be every day. If fees needed to be paid for my cricket, she took care of it. No matter what, she had my back. Things have changed since Dad’s cancer, and I cherish and appreciate her more, but this event knocks the stuffing out of me.

  One thing I am determined to do is protect her privacy while she recovers. In the period of Leanne almost dying in childbirth, Dad getting another tumour cut out, Nan dying, Pop having a heart attack, and now Mum having a brain haemorrhage, I have just been made Australian Test cricket captain. I’m constantly in the spotlight and dealing with the pressures of this new role, but don’t go public about this sequence of events at the centre of my life. The world doesn’t know that I am preoccupied by one body-blow after another to the people I love most.

  Nor have we revealed publicly that, while Dad was at the lowest point of his cancer treatment, he decided that he needed to prepare himself for what he would do if things didn’t go to plan. During and after his cancer treatment, he kind of retreated into himself, so that he was in a shell where he could minimise the hurt to everyone else. He detached himself emotionally from Mum and, after more than 25 years, they split up. They still got on fine together, but he closed in around himself and his condition and wanted to be alone. When his cancer went into remission, he kept this determination to live his life differently.

  Their break-up affected me to the core. When I split up with my then fiancée Lara Bingle in 2010, part of the undercurrent in my thinking is that if a couple like Mum and Dad can’t make it, what hope have I got? I don’t even want to start a serious relationship if it’s going to end in separation. Mum and Dad are my heroes, and their marriage has always been a kind of gold standard for Leanne and me. I can’t imagine myself measuring up to my parents’ partnership. How can I do it, if they can’t?

  It takes me a long time to get over that fear. When Kyly Boldy and I start dating, I open up with her about it. There is a strength of love between us that helps me get over my self-doubt.

  The road to happiness with Kyly is a long one. We were in the same year at Westfield Sports High, where she was specialising in dance, but didn’t have much to do with each other. In 2007, before I began dating Lara, I introduced myself to Kyly at a bar in Cronulla. We reconnected over a drink, and as we left, I sent my best mate Steve Phillips to ask for her number. She declined, saying I could come and ask myself. Now I was so embarrassed, I decided to leave it to chance, hoping we would bump into each other at another stage.

  That was it for Kyly and me for the next three years. In 2010, when she got onto Twitter, Kyly thought, as she didn’t really know anyone on Twitter, she would try getting in touch with me again. She sent a message along the lines of, ‘Hey stranger, how are you going?’ I was in the West Indies at the time for the World Twenty20 and we caught up when I returned home.

  By that stage I was going through a rough time, and Kyly’s warmth and compassion touched me. She had been brought up in a very close and loving family, and encouraged me to let my vulnerability show rather than seeking ways to cover it up. She and I shared fundamental values – she knew that when things were at their most difficult, the people you turned to were your family and close friends. She could see that I was needing the comfort of family, and I fell in love with her family too. That strong bond of unity provided an extra reinforcement for me at a time when my self-confidence was being shaken. She convinced me that I could hope for the kind of home life I wanted, that I shouldn’t give up on myself.

  While all of those events are overtaking our family life between 2007 and 2011, I am still trying my best to improve my cricket and contribute to Australia winning matches. But this is also when a section of the public mood has taken a turn against me. While I’m trying to support my family, I wake up one day to find that The Daily Telegraph in Sydney is on a mission to tell the world what a dickhead I am. My friendship with Andrew Symonds breaks down, I have a changing room altercation with Simon Katich, and finally, to ice the cake, when I break up with Lara, these separate episodes are all linked as a sequence of black marks against my name.

  I say nothing in public about these clashes and, until the end of my Test career, I never will. Throughout, I feel like my family is my anchor, my most basic connection to things like love and loyalty. What do my troubles matter compared with what’s been happening to Mum, Dad, Leanne and my grandparents? I cherish them more and more during this period, and they and Kyly will become the platform for the second half of my international career, when I will be determined to be a better person, a better batsman and a better leader.

  When I think things are tough in my world, a friend tells me to go and take a walk through a cemetery. Nothing like death can put your issues into their proper proportion. Feel what you feel when you lose someone close. Walk through a children’s hospital and imagine that’s your own child in the ward. Look up, and see the sun rather than the rain. Then you’ll live life the way you should. After those horrible years for my family, this becomes my new direction. But, as with every resolution, it’s easier said than done.

  7

  DEPUTY

  I found it very difficult to be Australian vice-captain. Ricky was by far the best batsman I ever played with, he was one of my heroes and I loved playing with him, but his style of leadership was very different from mine, and being so close to him as vice-captain, it was hard for me to be a yes-man when I disagreed with what was happening around me. Vice-captaincy wasn’t a role that suited me well. In his autobiography, Ricky wrote that he was ‘disappointed with some of the things’ I did as vice-captain. He didn’t accuse me of being treacherous or disruptive, but said that I was reluctant to get involved in planning meetings and daily debriefs or take on a leadership role. When my private life was turbulent, he said, I would go into my shell.

  He was right. I was not a good vice-captain to him.

  This might surprise a few people, but I never set out on my journey in cricket with any desire at all to be vice-captain, let alone captain, of Australia. My dream was simply to play for Australia. When I went to bed, cradling my cricket bat, I would literally dream that I was walking out to bat for my country. In my dream, I was wearing the same helmet as Michael Slater. When I made a hundred, I take the helmet off and kiss it on the crest like Michael Slater did.

  But I never dreamed of being captain of Australia. In junior teams when Dad was coach, he wouldn’t make me captain for more than one game. He swapped the job around so that someone different got a go every week. That was part of Dad’s basic principle of team participation. Although I argued against it at the time, I loved that sense of fairness he had and it taught me to celebrate the team over the individual achievement. Dad taught me that, whatever game I was playing, the team came first.

  I was captain in some junior representative teams, which was my first taste of the conventions that apply in Australian cricket. The batsman who is first picked, who can lead by example, is usually captain. People expect it. It doesn’t mean you’ve got the best cricket brain in the team, but it was the way things were done, and I did like it. As a captain of junior teams, I was pretty aggressive. One of the things I loved about captaincy was that it gave you the chance to express yourself and have an impact throughout your team. But from the under-19s level onwards, I had no ca
ptaincy experience.

  This often happens to batsmen who play up an age group: they are often the youngest and smallest batsman in their team, so their experience of captaincy is via exposure to their elders. Don Bradman didn’t lead teams until he was captain of Australia, because until then he had been the youngest in every team he played in. I was in year 7 when I played in the Liverpool Boys’ High First XI, and was 16 when I played first grade for Western Suburbs; there was no way I was going to be captain when I was a boy playing among men. This pattern was repeated when I made the New South Wales and Australian teams.

  My exposure to my elders left a deep impression on me. One of my early first grade captains at Western Suburbs was Michael Swan, who was in his mid-thirties at the time. He was big on wanting us to be the best fielding team in the comp. We may not have won premierships, but we got close and often beat more talented sides because we were the best fielding team. Michael was very positive and aggressive in his bowling and fielding tactics, always driving hard to win games. This was also Dad’s philosophy of cricket. You are out there to win, and sometimes to achieve that you need to risk losing. It made cricket a much more exciting game if you were always trying to think up a way to get a result, one way or the other.

  As an observer coming up through the ranks, I loved Mark Taylor’s creative instincts. If he won the toss on a greentop, he had the courage to open the batting on it, knowing he had Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath to bowl on the last day. Due to their success rate, he believed that batting first and bowling last gave them their best chance of winning. That self-sacrifice showed how Tubby put the team first.