Ashes 2021/22: Alex Carey’s tale of triumph over a diversity of challenges
Alex Carey’s story could be that of an athlete who was almost good enough – but instead it’s one of resilience, perseverance and what it takes to wear the baggy green.
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Stripped of his boots and then his gloves, Alex Carey reached for a neck tie.
In what seems like a bizarro version of Catch Me If You Can, Carey scored a full-time position at a financial planning firm because at 23 he had already been delisted by Greater Western Sydney and South Australia.
“I would say comfortably he’s an outdoors guy, but he fitted in well,” FinSec colleague and friend Rohan Reid said.
“His role was implementing advice, dealing with clients, booking in review meetings, contacting clients and contacting product providers.
“He was extremely humble, willing to learn, a good listener, punctual, on time, trustworthy – all the things you need in the finance industry.
“We’re an open-plan office and everyone has got their own little pod. He had his own little desk space, probably a couple of metres.”
Carey, 30, started a new job last week and his office for the next five days will be right behind the Adelaide Oval pitch … and just down the road from FinSec.
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Carey’s Brighton Secondary mate Sam Willoughby will return to Adelaide next month for the opening of a $6m BMX track named in the Olympian’s honour.
Perhaps a rollercoaster should be named after Carey, such has been the nauseating ride to his baggy green.
The Giants stole Carey from cricket’s clutches – and the promise of a rookie Redbacks contract – in 2009.
With the AFL’s backing, GWS recruiter Neville Stibbard emailed Carey telling him: “You could be a premiership player of a start-up club, which would be history-making to your grandkids”.
Some at the Giants remember coach Kevin Sheedy whispering that they’d found the next ‘Smokin’ Joe Misiti after Carey’s first or second training session.
“There were games where in my opinion he was clearly good enough to make it as an AFL player,” said Western Bulldogs superstar Adam Treloar, who played two seasons with Carey at GWS.
“His biggest weakness was just his speed. But he had a great ability to find the footy and be really composed.
“The same way that he is now, just so composed and cool and calm … he was the exact same as a footy player.”
Carey put the runs on the board at GWS, winning the 2010 best-and-fairest as the club’s captain two years before it entered the AFL.
But with Tom Scully (Melbourne) and Callan Ward (Western Bulldogs) poached to play in the midfield and 11 of the first 13 picks in the national draft – used on the likes of Toby Greene and Stephen Coniglio – there was no room for Carey on the Giants’ inaugural AFL list.
“I told him we’ve got 20 midfielders, have a crack at cricket, mate,” Sheedy said.
Carey put the runs on the board at South Australia … but only 31 of them.
“He’d come back from AFL and hadn’t refined his skill and ability, because he’d been focused in other areas,” said Tim Ludeman, who was Redbacks’ wicket-keeper at the time.
Carey was dropped after averaging 10.1 as a top-order batsman in three Sheffield Shield matches.
A fear of failure started to overtake the left-hander’s sense of freedom at the crease and after the 2013-14 summer he was gone from both sports.
Two months later he sat in the outer at a packed Adelaide Oval watching former GWS teammate Jack Hombsch help power Port Adelaide to a stunning win against the all-conquering Hawks.
Carey went to bed that night knowing he had to be at his FinSec desk on Monday, but that the corporate world wouldn’t keep him.
“The No. 1 thing with Alex is resilience,” said best mate Andrew Shearer, who went to school with Carey and Willoughby.
“When he got delisted lot of people would’ve gone and sat in their room and cried for a bit and thought the world was over.
“But he just got back in the horse. Whatever he was going to do he was going to succeed at. He just does everything at 100 per cent.”
Every chapter of Carey’s life seems to tell the same story.
Compare Shearer’s words to these from ex-Giants recruiter Sam Sheedy: “Very talented, very dedicated. He was always going to make it at the top level, no matter what he put his heart and soul into.”
Or this from Treloar: “Whatever he put his mind he was going to succeed at and it’s no surprise to me that now he’s flourishing.”
Carey’s buzz words are hard working, humble and driven and it doesn’t take long for a bingo.
There’s no single jaw-dropping anecdote that sums up Carey’s unquenchable thirst to be the best.
Instead there’s countless little examples, like last week when he caught the early bus to the Gabba nets with Nathan Lyon for an extra look at the off-spinner’s bounce and drift before their first Test together.
Carey takes that attitude everywhere – be it playing for GWS on local Canberra ovals in Tuggeranong and Belconnen or striking 71 runs for Australia in what was a World Cup rescue mission at Lord’s.
Treloar said Carey wouldn’t even be aware of the profound and lasting impact he had on players including Jeremy Cameron, Dylan Shiel, Nathan Wilson and himself.
“He showed us the way on how we needed to prepare ourselves to train and play at a higher standard to actually get the best out of ourselves to establish ourselves as bona fide AFL players,” Treloar said.
“I always remember that he was the most professional. He would be the first one out there, he would always train at a high standard and there wouldn’t be drop-offs in his training.
“You could just tell he was born to be a leader with the way he spoke to the group.
“We were trying to get taught all these Xs and Os, but we were all 17-18-year-old kids who were just chasing a footy around really not caring about structure, whereas he was doing that.”
Carey returned to Flagstaff Hill Football Club in 2015 to play with Shearer. They were minor premiers but lost the preliminary final.
“(Carey’s) brother was assistant coach, I was playing and his dad coached B-grade that year as well,” Shearer said.
“But I think he still had cricket in the back of his mind. Footy was more of a release and to catch up with a couple of mates, hence why he played cricket and not footy finals.”
The Redbacks soon came calling again, suspecting Carey would in fact make the grade after a mountain of grade runs for Glenelg.
Full-time state training came at the expense of Carey’s job in finance. He is still on the books, but FinSec suspected he wasn’t a keeper.
“His position is held, because when he left to train full-time who knows where it was headed?” Reid said.
“We’ll happily have him back, but let’s hope that’s not for a long, long time.”
Ludeman saw Carey come of age as soon as he was “living it day-to-day as a contracted cricketer”.
It also came at the expense of Ludeman’s state career, with Carey edging past him in the Redbacks’ XI in the lead-up to the 2015-16 Sheffield Shield final.
“When you’re working together and competing for the one wicket-keeping spot there can sometimes be angst,” Ludeman said.
“But he’s just such a lovely guy and we got on really well and helped each other get better.
“That’s a testament to his character because he’s all about others and just a wonderful character and a good team man.”
Ludeman said Carey was a “beautiful athlete with powerful legs” and a “natural gloveman”.
This time he looked first-class.
Carey thumped 443 runs for Adelaide Strikers in 2017-18 and that breakout Big Bash was rewarded when Tim Paine suffered gastro before an ODI against England.
Coincidentally, Carey’s mates had a bucks party in Brisbane that weekend.
“It was a bit loose – 25 blokes on a bucks trip who all knew him as a 14-year-old,” Shearer said.
“That was unbelievable.”
Commentator Mark Taylor picked up on Shearer’s crew chanting, ‘Carey! Carey’ in a throwback to North Melbourne games in the 1990s.
Carey looked like becoming an honest footballer. One AFL recruiter said he was a neat, one-paced midfielder, similar to Brisbane’s Jarryd Lyons.
So Sheedy told Carey to test himself at cricket, and then cricket tested his patience.
Now Carey is Australia’s 461st Test cricketer, and FinSec isn‘t planning on him coming back.
WHY ROLLING OVER IN BED NEARLY DESTROYED A TEST CAREER
BEN HORNE
Jhye Richardson has made a stunning comeback to Test cricket just 18 months after a late night emergency phone call to a doctor led to his career being saved.
So brittle was the shoulder Richardson badly dislocated in the high-impact fielding accident which destroyed his 2019 World Cup and Ashes dreams, he rolled over in his sleep one night a year later and popped it out of its socket for a third time.
The West Australian doctor and physio rushed to his house to find him in agony, and right there on the spot at 10pm in his own bedroom, it was decided the fast bowler had no choice but to undergo major reconstructive surgery if he was to ever be a chance of returning to the top.
“It was horrific. It was the off-season, so we’d just finished the domestic season and he was asleep in bed, and 10pm at night he called myself and the doctor and we were around his house in 15 minutes,” said WA physio Nick Jones ahead of Richardson’s date with destiny against England.
“We put it back in the middle of the night and at that point we knew, and he knew, that when it was coming out that easily because of the damage that had been done … it was very obvious that without surgical intervention he was not going to be able to have a long-term career as a pace bowler in cricket.
“That’s a significant point, isn’t it, in anyone’s career when you know you’ve got to go under the knife to try and save your career.”
Every summer it’s said that the day-night Test is where Australia’s opponents will be in with a sniff because of the unpredictability of the pink ball – but that theory is a complete myth judging by Australia’s imposing 8-0 record in Tests under lights.
Richardson – the man charged with filling the enormous void left by pink ball demon Josh Hazlewood at Adelaide Oval on Thursday – feared he may never bowl at Test level again and reached out for help dealing with his mental struggles.
Lauded for the way he starred in his two Tests against Sri Lanka in early 2019 – including a sizzling pink ball debut in Brisbane – Richardson was set to be a key part of Australia’s attack for the World Cup and the Ashes until his world fell apart when he suffered the catastrophic shoulder damage attempting a full length catch in the outfield in an ODI against Pakistan.
After scouring the country for a surgeon to trust with saving his career in April 2020, Richardson returns in Adelaide a medical marvel – which he will need to be given Hazlewood’s Adelaide day-night record of 28 wickets in five matches at 18.42 is every bit as freakish as pink ball prince Mitchell Starc.
“We’re 18 months down the track from when he had it done and we’re at that point where we’re now reaping the rewards,” said Jones, who concedes Richardson still needs to be careful diving in the field – evidenced when he came on as a sub in Brisbane and went at a diving chance to his right with his left arm instead.
“Any time you think about a pace bowler dislocating their bowling shoulder, that is just a significant injury and in terms of the actual damage sustained it was at the higher end of the spectrum.
“He’s been very mature and very professional in the process of being able to identify times when he’s had to reach out and get some extra support.
“Him getting back to Test cricket again will be an amazing achievement. A real feather in his cap for an extraordinary amount of hard work.”
Captain Pat Cummins is no stranger to medical setbacks after a history of back stress fractures, but said Richardson’s comeback to the grand stage is on another level and welcomed the fact he brings a different style to Hazlewood.
“At least with the back injuries you know players have done it before and got back. With the shoulder injuries it’s less common (for fast bowlers),” said Cummins.
“You feel like you never get quite as strong as you were previously.
“The biggest difference is the stature – slightly shorter and a bit skiddier compared to Josh’s tall bounce. But he’s really skilled, he can swing the ball both ways and nip the ball and he’s a bit faster than you think at around that 140km/h mark.”
Stat attack: Super Marn is Smith’s kryptonite
Something strange is happening in Australian cricket: Marnus Labuschagne has stolen Steve Smith’s Superman cape.
At first it was just the eccentric bat leaves and inseparable habits, but Labuschagne’s morphing into Smith has changed the dynamic of the Australian team and the records show it.
Since Labuschagne’s emergence as a star in his own right, the flow on effect is Smith has gone back to being a mere mortal Test batsman.
As one expands, the other contracts.
In the 10 Tests they’ve played together since the 2019 Ashes, Labuschagne has smashed 1396 runs at an average of 82.11, including five hundreds.
Smith in that same period has scored 579 runs at 38.60, with one Test century.
Wind the clock back to before Labuschagne replaced him as a concussion sub at Lord’s, and it was Smith who in 26 Test matches in Australia had smashed 2931 runs at an extraordinary 83.74, including 13 hundreds.
For Smith, there’s a simple explanation to the phenomenon that’s occurred.
“I bat my best when I’m under pressure and I’ve got that extra responsibility and I feel as though I need to be the one to stand up,” Smith told News Corp before the first Test.
“I think that’s the way I’ve gone about it for a while.”
The reality is, Smith is a batsman who relished being the man to rescue Australia when the building was burning down – which it often was.
His Bradman-like reputation was forged on being the heavy-duty colossus to save the team from scoreboard disaster when his back was to the wall.
But since Labuschagne made his old No. 3 position his own, Smith has been left with less fires to put out and instead of coming to the crease with the team on the verge of crisis, Smith has become more used to scenarios like the cushy 2-166 he walked out to against England at the Gabba.
Smith is looking at it as a luxury rather than a problem, but the question is, can the best batsman of his generation adjust to a new mindset where scoring runs is less often a matter of life or death?
How do you approach Christmas lunch when you used to be greeted by a full buffet, but now little brother has already eaten half the turkey by the time you arrive at the table?
Maybe it all changes in Adelaide.
“Over the past couple of home summers, the beauty is some of the other batters have really stood up and I haven’t had to score heaps of runs,” said Smith.
“ … Hopefully the rest of the line-up can score plenty this summer. I’d love to be a part of scoring plenty but if we all score runs I think that’s great for the team.”
Labuschagne has fixed so many problems for Australia’s top order with his meteoric rise, but he has also inadvertently impacted their greatest asset.
Smith acknowledges Labuschagne taking his place at No. 3 – and scoring so consistently – might have changed things for his game, but the bigger picture is it has transformed Australia into a more complete batting unit.
“Yeah of course. Marnus has played exceptionally well the last couple of years and I think it’s great when you’ve got a lot of people scoring runs consistently,” said Smith.
“If you’re doing that your team is generally in a pretty good place. I think we’ve got a strong batting line-up for this summer. We’ve got a strong squad.”
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