My Story

by Michael Clarke

  At Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, the change in pitch conditions is mind-blowing. Having previously being presented with dry pitch after dry pitch, suddenly we have spring-like English conditions. I win the toss at Edgbaston and bat first. The ball will swing early, but my view is that if we make 240 in the first innings, we will win the game. We just have to get through to lunch on the first day. Instead, we barely get into the afternoon session – all out for 136 in 36 overs. England bowl and catch superbly, and we don’t bat well.

  I contribute 13 runs for the match. In practice sessions over the past few months, I’ve been preparing for days like this, when the ball is moving around, but none of it matters, because my head isn’t in the right place.

  Trent Bridge is the worst wicket I have seen in 12 years as an international cricketer. This game should not start. The pitch needs four hours of sunshine on it before it’s playable. I am sure that whoever wins the toss will bowl the opposition out for less than 120. I don’t say that, of course, particularly when I call incorrectly. My teammates are no doubt thinking, I wish he’d won the toss.

  David Warner and Steve Smith are out within the first over. I’m in, wearing this helmet. For my entire career, my helmet was part of my own skin, totally natural. Now I can’t stop feeling it and seeing it.

  But I have a plan. Always, what has worked for me is this: the more dangerous the bowling, the more positively you have to bat. There is no point in waiting for them to get me. I won’t be a sitting duck. I will play with intent and if they get me, they get me.

  But no matter what I try, it refuses to work. It’s cricket, and I am caged up inside my own mind. I urge myself to watch the ball, but thoughts buzz around in my head like a cloud of flies blurring my vision. I’m not watching the ball. I think I am, but I’m not. Everything seems faster. Stuart Broad is bowling at 135 km/h, and it feels like 150 km/h. When your mind is clear, none of those things matter. You just watch the ball, have a smile on your face, and react.

  Instead, I go too hard at the ball and nick it to second slip. My mind is gone. I can’t let go of the fear of getting hit, because sitting on my head, heavy and cumbersome, is an object that couldn’t be a more stark reminder if it was a tombstone. On 27 November last year, we all realised, Oh my f—ing God, in the sport we’ve loved all our lives, we can die. Not just get hurt, but die.

  Did we pick the wrong team? We’ll never know. When things get chaotic in the first innings at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge, experienced players would have had plans and stuck to them without second-guessing. Hadds would have thought, I’ve seen this before, my mind is clear, I’ll hit the first ball for six. Watto would have had a set plan and stuck to it. But would it have worked? To have Hadds and Watto in there playing the way they play, it may not have changed the outcome, but it would have created a different atmosphere in the changing room.

  I take accountability. I should have been stronger with the selectors in demanding the team I wanted, and in sticking with it. I didn’t push hard enough to have Peter Siddle in the team, and when he storms back in at The Oval, making a huge difference, it is too late for the Ashes. Once we lost Ryan Harris, we should have replaced him with a similar type of bowler.

  But these things are always overtaken by the circumstances. Mitch Marsh scored three first-class hundreds in the first three games. How could they not choose him ahead of Watto? Mitchell Starc was outbowling everyone in the nets, and Josh Hazlewood was a lot faster than Sidds. We were asking every batsman coming out of the nets, ‘Who’s bowling best?’ Always the answer was ‘Starc and Hazlewood’. The selectors went for speed over accuracy and consistency, and practice performance over experience.

  My responsibility is in not pushing an alternative view, so there’s no point trying to dodge that now. I became so bitterly disappointed with my own form, trying so hard to fix it, that I wasn’t thinking straight in all those other areas.

  I retire after the Fifth Test, which we win, making the series result 3–2 in England’s favour. I go on holidays with Kyly. I slow down, finally.

  I begin to see clearly.

  The Australian cricket team is in a fantastic place, with lots of talented young guys working extremely hard under Steve Smith’s captaincy. It’s their time. I can walk away, as one of six retirees this year – with Brad Haddin, Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Chris Rogers and Ryan Harris – knowing that we are passing the Australian team to a generation who can own this next era. They need fresh ideas and a new leader.

  It’s time for me to go.

  20

  OBSESSIVE AND COMPULSIVE

  I wish I knew then what I know now. By the time I’m retired, that is a recurring theme. I wish I knew myself, when I was playing, with the insight I gained once I found peace and distance from cricket, and fatherhood. I might have enjoyed those last years more.

  Fatherhood helps loosen me up and soften me. I’ve had a niece and nephew for several years and have been looking forward to becoming a father since I was young. When Kelsey Lee is born on 16 November 2015, several weeks premature and just 2.1 kilograms, so that she has to stay in hospital for five weeks, she is so tiny and delicate. She melts me. She has me wrapped around her finger, and I have such admiration for the maternal love coming from Kyly, handling all this while still being the great person she is. She’s the perfect mother. I don’t know if anyone can ever be ready for kids, but she is as ready as anyone could be. She never complained once during a sometimes difficult pregnancy, and very soon she and Kelsey Lee have become thick as thieves. I’ve always respected women, but it goes to a new level now. Seeing Kyly as a mother makes me think of Mum, who taught me so much about love, and of Leanne, who is such a great mother to her two kids. If I can be half as good a parent as Mum, Dad and Leanne, I will be proud. I’m now as passionate about being the best father and best provider I can be as I was about being the best cricketer I could be.

  I wonder, if I had this experience earlier, this softening and humanising, whether it might have made me a more compassionate captain.

  After becoming a father, I finally press PAUSE, and look at the day, the moment, to soak it up. I wish I did that more during my career, stop to enjoy the journey as it was happening. I got to play with some of the greatest cricketers to play the game, win World Cups, win Test series, meet fantastic people . . . It was not just what I’d dreamed of back in my bedroom at Liverpool, it was better than the dream.

  When it was good, I couldn’t get enough cricket. In 2012, I started the year with 329 against India in the New Year’s Test match at the SCG. It felt like I could bat another ten hours. The only thing that would stop me was when I felt we had enough runs to win the game. Two Test matches later, I made 210 against the Indians at the Adelaide Oval and we completed a 4–0 series win. I scored another hundred in the one-day series at home, and then went to the West Indies, where we won the Tests 2–0. I couldn’t get enough cricket; I played my only season of the Indian Premier League, a six-match stint with the Pune Warriors. With the Australian team, I toured England and the United Arab Emirates for one-day series with England and Pakistan.

  Somewhere in the middle of it, I slipped away to Wolgan Valley for our wedding.

  Is there another cricket match on somewhere? I’ll be in it. Days after getting back from the Emirates, I play a one-day domestic match and then three back-to-back Sheffield Shield matches for New South Wales. Then it’s into a Test series with South Africa at home. The runs are just flooding out of my bat. I make 259 not out in Brisbane, and then 230 in Adelaide. My year ends with 106 in the Boxing Day Test match against Sri Lanka. By now, my hamstrings are barely connected with my legs, my back is killing me, and the year has exhausted Punter and Huss into retirement. What just happened?

  I don’t stop to smell the roses – I want them to keep on sprouting. When I make the triple-hundred in Sydney, the highest score in 130 years of Test cricket on my home ground, do I sit back and reflect on it? Not for a moment. I am not content; I foc
us on how I can get better.

  After the next three double-hundreds, I always think my game can improve. My goal isn’t to maintain that form, but to get better still. I never take a moment to reflect on what I’ve done. I fear that if I stop and look back, I will seize up. Every morning, I get out of bed with the sparrows and say to myself, You can get better every day.

  It’s a lot of stress to put on yourself, every single day of your life. And it’s only when I’m married and living with Kyly, and she’s getting to know me better and better, she tells me, ‘You’re obsessive-compulsive.’ It’s not a medical diagnosis, but it might as well be. She can see that for everything I’m achieving, I am unable to press PAUSE on life, and if I continue this way it’s going to damage me in the long run.

  The signs have been there since the beginning. When I was a kid, my room was spotless. I made my own bed and packed my own school bag, had to have everything just so. I wouldn’t even let my own mum pack my lunchbox. What kind of boy is that fussy about having things a certain way?

  There’s a story my parents tell about my neat-freakness that goes right back to when I was a toddler. I was given a set of Tonka trucks. They were my pride and joy – so much so that I would not take them outside the house, in case they got a speck of dirt on them. One of my cousins came over once, and, surprise surprise, took my Tonka trucks out to the sandpit in the back yard. I blew my top, got them back inside, and made sure they didn’t go out again.

  I was obsessive in my fears, too. There was my fear of someone breaking into the house and my bedroom being near the front door – one reason why I slept with my cricket bat. I was afraid of flying. I liked the beach, but didn’t like the sand. I was afraid of sharks, and had regular nightmares that they were chasing me. There was a physical dimension to it: as a child, I regularly broke out in sweats, and at night I would walk around and talk in my sleep. The physical symptoms seemed to go hand in hand with my impatience and my incessant need to be active.

  If I was like that naturally, as a kid, don’t even ask about my cricket kit. It’s immaculate in its neatness. I pack it exactly the same way every time and have to know where everything is. I drink a certain amount of hydrolytes before every game. I wear the same brand of shoes for nine-tenths of my career. I carry my helmet on flights; I won’t allow it to travel in the cargo hold. Once, when I was at the Australian Cricket Academy, Rod Marsh took my dad into the team changing room while we were out in the field.

  ‘Take a look around,’ Rod said. ‘Now, guess who owns that corner.’

  Dad could see what he meant. The entire room was a mess, total chaos, but in this corner, every bit of equipment and clothing was laid out perfectly. It was spotless and well organised.

  ‘Where does this kid come from?’ Rod said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dad said, ‘that’s the way he is.’

  These are not superstitions, as such. I don’t have to step onto the field left foot first, or count a certain number of steps in the middle, or place my faith in some lucky talisman. But it might be worse than having superstitions. It is the absolute rigid need to stick to certain routines. When I’m in the middle, I mark my guard every single over: centre twice, leg stump twice. Every single over, whether I’m playing for Western Suburbs, New South Wales or Australia.

  It might have more widespread effects than simply following superstitions, because my need for these routines is hyper-rational and is who I am. You can’t tamper with it. It’s what made me me. I always wore inner gloves inside my batting gloves, but inners inside-out, because I didn’t like feeling the seams against my skin. If a changing room attendant found my inners and turned them the right way out, I changed them back. If I marked my guard and a fieldsman came and scuffed it out, I re-marked it. These things were what made me me. It limited my social life when I was young. My friends would be going out on Friday or Saturday night, and I would say, ‘Not me – cricket tomorrow.’ I was totally disciplined about being in bed by 8.30 pm. I was full-on, and insatiable. I wanted to play every day. Indoor cricket, outdoor cricket, playing games was the best type of preparation for playing more games. Play and play and play.

  After I got dropped from the Australian team in late 2005, it only became more frenzied. I scolded myself for letting my focus drift. From now on, my training routines were made of iron. There was no sponsor commitment, no friendship, nothing in the world that I would allow to interfere with my dedication. I enclosed myself in my bubble and saw only what I wanted to see. I needed that discipline if I wanted success. Always the next thing, and always more.

  Part of being who I was, was never to stop to reflect on little achievements and find some inner peace. I loved winning and scoring runs, and celebrated those achievements, but I kept and relied on that fanaticism about success. This manic self-discipline, this obsession with getting better, this compulsion for certain routines, was more than a set of habits, it was an addiction, because I believed I would be better with it and lost without it.

  During a Test match, the routine cannot be changed. The night before a Test match, I have room service. Then I’m asleep by ten o’clock, for eight hours, rising at six in the morning. As captain, I exude this obsessiveness through the team. My phone is never turned off. Whenever a teammate wants to text or call, 24 hours a day, I will answer it. I go to bed with my phone switched on.

  In the changing room, waiting to bat, I am nervous, usually on my feet talking with anyone who will put up with me. During most breaks, I have a shower to freshen myself up. It’s what has worked for me since I was a child, and if you even think of persuading me to change it now, I’ll bite your head off.

  During those years of captaincy, I am less and less tolerant of anyone going outside the team program. In their spare time, I am more than happy for my teammates to do whatever the hell they want. That’s what I’ve always done: when I switch off, I run my own race. But when it comes to cricket, I am obsessed with the team doing everything as a team.

  That year of 2012, when I score all those runs, is the highlight of my career but also, in a way, the worst thing for me; because it vindicates all this obsessiveness and compulsiveness. It tells me that I am right to follow this course in the way I have. And it tells me that I need to intensify my efforts if I want to get better still. There’s no little voice in me saying, You need to limit this. I’m thinking, this is how successful people operate. They throw every ounce of energy into what they’re doing, and they switch off later. I will be the best I can be, and then walk out of cricket.

  I have a bet with Steve Bernard in the West Indies in 2003 that I will retire by the time I’m 30 – this is before I’ve even played one Test match. But that’s the cut-and-dried, impatient quality of my mind. I feel that if I fail to be the best cricketer I can be, I will never forgive myself. When in doubt, work harder, train more, the answer is always more.

  It’s not my brain but my body that eventually cries, Stop!

  When I am 17 years old, playing for New South Wales Colts, suddenly my lower back feels like it’s being grabbed by a vice. The pain is eye-watering. We go to hospital, where a scan shows two bulging discs and degeneration in the lower part of my back. Every now and then, through the years, I tear a part of the disc lining, which causes the disc to bulge out between the vertebrae. That’s what causes the pain. It’s an incurable condition and will only get worse while I am pushing my body to the max. A disc can pop out whether I’m running in training, twisting to get out of the way of a bouncer, or just getting out of bed. I can merely shift my weight from one side to the other, and a spasm will bring me to my knees.

  The solution, early in my career, is to have bed rest for four or five days, and then slowly get back into full movement. Through force of will and a fair bit of good luck, I don’t miss many matches. But it’s like a ticking time bomb inside me, and it feeds my helter-skelter mentality. I have to go out and get everything I can right now, because soon I’m going to be a crock.

  I
don’t let myself contemplate the possibility that the two things might be linked: my obsessiveness and my back problems.

  As my career goes on, there are generally two different types of days. Eighty per cent of the time, I wake up with stiffness in the lower back. In my morning shower, it’s impossible to pick up the soap if I drop it. Early in the morning, I’m stiff and sore moving around. The hardest part of my day is putting on my shoes and socks in the morning. To lift my foot up and get a sock or shoe on it, I have to reach down awkwardly with one hand, get a grip on the foot, and bring it up as I lean back. Then I can work the sock on with the other hand.

  My back hates flexion – bending forwards – and rotation, pretty much the main movements for a batsman. On the other hand, the more extension, or bending backwards, the better. I learn to sleep on my stomach or my back, never my side.

  If I bat or field for several hours, the next morning my back will be so stiff that I think, I’m not rolling out today, I’m staying in bed. But I am playing a game and I want to win and the greatest point of pride in my entire life is that I get through the first nine years of my Test career without missing a single Test match through injury. So I get up, and it starts again.

  Those are the good days.

  The other 20 per cent are the days when I have had an episode. I do it playing a cut shot or dodging a bouncer, moving into flexion and twisting while I go at the ball. I’m most vulnerable after fielding all day, flexing and bending in slips. I have Alex Kountouris treat me for 45 minutes before every playing day. He tries taping me, putting me in Thermoskin, and asks everyone in the industry for new ideas. He treats me again for 45 minutes after play. For ten years, I have treatment every breakfast and every evening, and sometimes also another session in mid-morning, after training.