“I’ve been through a fucking hell of a lot,” Steve Harmison says in the deserted bar of Ashington Football Club on a quiet afternoon. “I’ve had the upmost highs and the lowest lows. I’ve gone from being the No1 bowler in the world, to bowling that ball in Brisbane [when, in 2006, Harmison delivered the most embarrassing opening delivery of an Ashes series]. I’ve gone from feeling on top of the world to being in a clinic in the Priory. How much higher can you get and how much lower can you go? I don’t think you can.”
This past week has felt like the dog days of summer across most of the country but, in Northumberland, the heat has been muted. Harmison has dressed accordingly – in sandals, shorts and a long-sleeve shirt. The 38-year-old former fast bowler takes a swig of his fizzy drink as he reflects on a cricketing life studded with plaudits but riven with lasting pain.
Harmison led England’s attack during the most thrilling Ashes of all, in 2005, and he was part of another home triumph against Australia four years later. Depression, however, always stalked him. “The important thing is I’ve come out the other side of it. If a kid playing cricket now has the same problems I would love to help them overcome adversity. I had to do it myself. I had the best family, I was earning good money, I was the best bowler in the world. At that point [in 2004], I was at my darkest. The fact I kept going is my biggest achievement because you never overcome depression. But if you don’t cave in, that’s a real strength.”
Harmison and I have already reminisced about our last poignant interview in December 2004. He led the world rankings after a stunning year for England, which included him taking seven for 12 as he destroyed West Indies in Kingston with pace, bounce and venom. England were on their way to South Africa, for a tough series win which would strengthen their resolve before the Ashes, when Harmison and I met at Heathrow.
He cried a little as he stared at the reflection of the international departures sign in the dirty window of an airport café. “Today is the day I wish I wasn’t a professional cricketer,” Harmison told me then. “Today is the day I wish I worked in an office in a nine-to-five job. This is the worst day I’ve known as a cricketer. There have been an awful lot of tears in the family today. How do you tell your kids you won’t be home for 10 weeks? It’s just being away that kills me.”
He was suffering from depression which, officially, was described as “homesickness”. I wrote: “If homesickness is a kind of illness, then Harmison suffers from a distressing form of the ailment.”
Two years before Marcus Trescothick left an Ashes tour because of mental health issues and long before Michael Yardy and Jonathan Trott suffered similar difficulties, Harmison faced torment. He might be the last of this England quartet to publish a book but his autobiography Speed Demons is affecting and moving. It is also alarming as Harmison reveals that, on the morning of our 2004 interview, he had considered driving his car into another as a way of avoiding his flight to South Africa.
“I’d just bump into somebody’s back end and say my neck is sore and I’ll get an extra three days at home,” he says now of causing a possible accident. “But that would have made it worse because I would have had to fly on my own. I never would have got there.”
It seems incredible the severity of Harmison’s depression was not addressed. “I don’t think mental health was highlighted then. It was only later, when Marcus got really poorly that people stood back and thought about it. It ended Marcus’s international career but then the next player came and the next. All of a sudden, people began to understand our problems.
“I was happy to have my depression labelled as homesickness because I would’ve been a hell of a lot worse if I wasn’t playing cricket. A lot of people in cricket knew about my depression but I didn’t want the general public to know. People can tolerate you having a poor game. They can say: ‘OK, he’s homesick.’ But they would be less tolerant of a poor game when mental health issues are mentioned. My fear was they wouldn’t allow me back. I desperately needed to play cricket and, at first, I just thought it was when I went away. I remember being in Disneyland Paris crying my eyes out but I was also doing it at home. I really had to seek help.”
Did it help when he was diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression? “Yeah, because that explained things. I went to the Priory and the doctor said: ‘I don’t know anything about cricket.’ The relief was unreal because I thought: ‘Great, he’s going to talk to me about the symptoms rather than the cricketer.’ He would see me as a human being. I feel the same now. I’d go back once a week if I had to because it helps so much to talk about it.”
Can he handle bouts of depression more easily now? “Yeah, because I’ve dealt with them for so long. I know how to hide in a hole, go quietly into hibernation for a few days. It tends to last a couple of weeks but it’s only three or four days where it’s really bad. You learn to cope and, at its worst, you know the next day will feel better. But it’s harder because I don’t have that release of playing cricket anymore.”
Harmison now manages Ashington in the Northern League Division One. He receives only expenses but the focus of looking after a team has steadied him in retirement. “Until I got into the football I was in a void. Alcohol then played a massive part. You’d say: ‘I’ve not got anything to do so I’ll go out and have a couple of beers.’ I never had a problem with alcohol but I used it to fill the void when I finished playing. It made me feel a little better as I was drinking but I was a thousand times worse the next day.
“My problem was being on my own. It’s the same now. Doing the media stuff you travel back and forward to places and you’re alone in your head. You spend a lot of time ringing people up just to talk to somebody. Your mind is amazing but it can be quite dangerous. The biggest part is you don’t sleep and sleeping pills are addictive. I’ve got off them now but I’ll only sleep three or four hours a night. So I have good days and bad days.
“At the minute I’m quite content and trying to move forward but I still don’t really have a structure to life. Football helps but it’s not a job. I would like a job working in cricket because I’ve got the expertise. I’d love to think something would come up at Durham but right now they don’t know what’s happening with their finances.”
Next month it will be 12 years since Harmison and England were at the forefront of public consciousness, as the 2005 Ashes transfixed the country on terrestrial television. “People were being locked out of the grounds and it was an amazing summer,” Harmison says. “There was no football on TV and we got 8.75 million people watching cricket. It is sad that, today, most people outside cricket don’t know Joe Root or Ben Stokes. I sometimes work on Sky and the way they present the game to an armchair fan is phenomenal but we’ve not got enough armchair fans now.
“It will be interesting to see what happens with the next TV rights. I hope the ECB gets it right, not just from a money point of view because we need as many people as we can to see this England team. These kids are unreal. Root, Stokes, Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Mark Wood, Jos Buttler. This generation could be missed which would be so sad. I want everybody to watch Buttler at his peak – hitting balls the way he does. I want the game to spread across the whole country again.
“I also worry about the players. I look at this winter’s schedule and Root, plays all three formats. He’s got a baby who, by the time he leaves, will be [nine] months old. Soon after that, the baby is going to start walking and those are great things to see with your first child. Joe’s going away in October and might not come back until May. Yes, the family is going [to Australia] but it’s not the same. I know how tough it is because I was away for the birth of Abbie [the second of his four children]. She was three months old when I saw her the first time.”
Harmison admits there is “a disconnect” between him and his children – a direct consequence of being away so much when they were young. “There’s a little bit of distance because I wasn’t there. I’m probably going to be closer to my grandchildren than my own children. It pains me to say that. On the other hand they’ve had an amazing mum in Hayley. But even now it hurts that I missed the kids so much. One year I spent 300-odd nights in hotel rooms.”
It is surprising that, despite his sensitivity, Harmison should question the mental health issues suffered by Jonathan Trott. He has suggested that after the former England batsman left an Ashes tour in 2013 he spoke like someone who was mentally weak rather than mentally ill. “It’s because of the interview he did for Sky where he said the word ‘nutcase’. You don’t use those words to talk about mental health. He said: ‘I’m not a nutcase.’ To me it looked as if he’d had a hard time on the field and wanted to get out of the kitchen.”
Surely Harmison’s own problems have taught him not to judge other people without knowing exactly how they were feeling during a personal crisis? “I’ve just given my opinion and I really hope I’m wrong. If I am I’ll be the first to shake Jonathan’s hand and say: ‘I’m sorry.’ He is a great cricketer and I think England arguably missed him more than anybody else.”
Harmison’s application for a role as an England selector in 2014 only received a standard ECB rejection email, without any personal response to a player with 63 Test caps and 226 wickets. “I’d still love to work with England one day but I’m not sure the ECB would give me a job after what I’ve said. They chose the right selector in Angus Fraser, he’s got great experience, but I wanted to help and even now, I would still love to work with young players.”
While he waits to find out how his life may unfold over the next few years, Harmison can feel pride in withstanding the black dog of depression. “I tried my best and I didn’t let it beat me. That’s the underlying achievement. It’s not the length of the career, the games played or wickets taken. I had a real struggle in the middle of my career and I came out the other side of it. At the end of it, I felt a sense of achievement. I felt proud of myself.”
Steve Harmison’s Speed Demons is available from the Guardian bookshop
