Even at my peak I was a broken shell of a man but cricket saved me, says Harmison
IT’S hard to imagine now, but in 2004 — the year he went top of the world rankings — Steve Harmison considered crashing his car on the way to the airport.
Ahead of him was a long tour of South Africa, and a road accident — nothing too serious, mind — would allow him an extra few days at home. England would emerge from that trip triumphant, paving the way for their famous Ashes win the following summer. Earlier that year, Harmison had taken seven for 12 in Jamaica to blow away West Indies for 49. The world was his oyster. Except, deep down, it wasn’t. In the year he reached his professional peak, Harmison was plumbing personal depths.
‘What was actually sat in that car was a broken shell,’ he writes in his recently published autobiography, Speed Demons. ‘A person who had turned himself inside out in despair that the thing he was so good at was also the thing that made him ill, that took him away from everything he loved.’
Now, aged 38, he is still susceptible to the depression he bottled up during a 63-Test career that earned him 226 wickets and the tabloid nickname ‘Grievous Bodily Harmison’. But, despite the dark times, he knows he owes his sport a lot. ‘Cricket saved me in every way,’ he tells the Mail on Sunday. ‘My release was 11 o’clock when I went out there on the pitch. It was where I could get away from myself and my thoughts.
‘Cricket kept me sane — or as sane as I could be.’
The homesickness was a symptom of a crippling
anxiety, and he was diagnosed with clinical depression. Only those closest to him knew how bad things got.
‘If I’d said I’d had an illness, instead of people banging on about me being homesick, I’d never have played for England again, no chance,’ he says. ‘It was the days of one bad game and you were out. Lots of people didn’t understand, and I didn’t want it to override my cricket.
‘So-called experts and former players were talking about weakness, illness… that was hurtful.
‘Coming out the other side was the biggest achievement. My career was full of ridiculous highs and unbelievable lows, but in the end I got through it. I did what I needed to do.’