Michael Clarke: ‘It is fair to say I polarised’

Sporting legend Michael Clarke has opened up in a remarkably raw and honest interview about a crippling health condition he’s lived with his whole life.

Michael Clarke can see why some didn’t warm to him in his heyday as the Aussie Cricket captain.

Tattoos. Fast cars. Designer clothes. Clarke concedes he was a break from the traditional stereotype of previous big names of the game.

The revelation comes as the sporting great admits that while not formally diagnosed, he believes he has lived with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) his whole life.

“In regards to perception, I would like to think, more than my love and value for playing for my club or my state or my country, I don’t think was any less to a Mark Taylor, or Allan Border, or Steve Waugh but I think my lifestyle was very different,” Clarke said in the latest episode of the Mental As Anyone podcast. 

“I don’t think any of those three have tattoos or have an earring or dye their hair or, you know, played a handful of Test matches and wanted a Ferrari so went and bought a Ferrari.

“They don’t live in the eastern suburbs (of Sydney), there’s a lot of things perception that comes with all that stuff. And I guess I probably never really cared too much about worrying about what other people thought before making my decisions. I did what I felt. A 25-year-old kid from the western suburbs should be driving a ute with a cattle dog drinking VB and I wanted a Ferrari so I went and bought one.”

Clarke is remarkably raw and honest in the wide-ranging interview, discussing the obsessive behaviours he believes indicate “it is a given” he has OCD.

“I have never been checked, I think it is a given,” he said.

“It is like ADD, it’s a given. Definitely, ask my parents, you don’t need to take me to a doctor.”

Clarke’s house is always immaculately clean. His car is always full of petrol. He is rarely if ever late. The devoted father to eight-year-old daughter Kelsey-Lee puts his clothes out before bed so he is prepared for the morning.

“I like to be busy. I like to be doing stuff. When I was batting my best playing cricket, I’d be singing a song the whole innings. The bowler would be running in to bowl and I would be singing the song in my head. I would listen to music before I walked out to bat, someone got out, take my headphones off, walk out to bat and that song stays in my head until the lunch break where I’ll put music back in. So music, I think brings positivity for me as well and it gives my mind something to think about.”

It is a fascinating insight into one of Australia’s great athletes.

The 46-year-old is one of several high profile figures across sport and entertainment for the Mental As Anyone podcast. Others coming up in the series include Grant Denyer, Ben Gillies and Isaac Humphries.

“Naturally, I am probably a glass half full, rather than half empty guy,” he said.

“I’m very protective of the gap between sadness and depression. I think there is a difference. I’ve certainly been extremely sad, devastated, floored, can’t move for days can’t get out of bed. Losing family members, losing a couple of my closest friends, so I think I’ve felt the deepest of sadness, but I think it was sadness. I don’t know if it was depression.

“I’ve never gone to a doctor to be diagnosed with depression, for example, or to seek medication for depression. I’ve certainly seen people to get help, advice, guidance through tough periods I’ve had. There’s been I think, sort of halfway through my career, we started taking a psychologist with us on tour and I’ve spoken to a number of people to get help through tough periods. I don’t shy away from that. I think I’ve felt like I say the some tough sadness, some hard sadness, but I don’t think I’ve been depressed as such.”

To be fair, Clarke is probably the most polarising cricketing figure of his generation. You could also say that unfortunately contributed to his not receiving the credit he deserves for being one of the standout Australian cricketers of the last 25 years.

Instead, there has been much focus on his personal life. He was once engaged to Lara Bingle, now Worthington. And then there’s of course his much publicised Noosa break-up with Jade Yarbrough.

“I think I probably deserved a bit of what I copped but I played a sport that tradition and history is a massive part of that and I probably didn’t abide, you know, I didn’t swim between the flags as such,” he explained.

“I think it’s fair to say that I polarised. Some people liked me as a person, some people didn’t and naturally when you’re playing sport at the highest level, the judgment is made before people get to know you, those decisions that I made that probably people didn’t agree with, fair enough as well.”

November 27 marks the 10 year anniversary of Clarke’s close mate, cricketer Phillip Hughes’ death. Clarke was a mentor to Hughes, who died at just 25 after being struck in the neck by a ball playing the game he devoted his life to.

Clarke was the first player to address a press conference after Hughes’ death and also gave a stoic eulogy at his funeral service, which many would regard as one of his finest moments as Australian captain.

Each year on the anniversary of Hughes’ death, Clarke and his daughter light two candles in his honour.

“It is still, he could walk in the room today, like he could send me a text today,” he said.

“He was an amazing young man, very family orientated, loved the simple things in life but loved the best things in life as well. For a country boy to drink French champagne was unheard of. To come to my house in Bondi because he needed somewhere to stay for two days and stayed for six months is not OK. But he was like that with everyone, nobody would say a bad word about Hughesy, even his opposition players. I think the sadness as well is not only the loss for his family and all of us friends, but man that guy was a hell of a cricketer. So we as fans miss out on seeing someone play 100 Test matches and have the opportunity to be one of the all-time greats, so the game misses him as well.”

Clarke also reflects on the other cricketing mates he’s lost – Rod Marsh and Shane Warne.

“Death is a hard one because I think … your hope is that it gets better or it gets easier. But I don’t know, I’m still trying to work it out,” he said.

“Warnie was one of a kind. You needed time to say goodbye to someone like Warnie, like I sort of feel like it wasn’t how Warnie should have passed. He should have got liver cancer from smoking two packets a day and drinking what he drank and we should have had six months to say goodbye to him. I think the shock of Warnie floored me. My brain, it took days for me to comprehend that it was true.”

* A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday at 6am.

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Originally published as Michael Clarke: ‘It is fair to say I polarised’