Carberry is following the same path as Aussie Rogers. Source: Getty Images
AUSTRALIA had Chris Rogers, now England has its very own potential Ashes fairytale story in the form of Michael Carberry.
Rogers was a shock inclusion in Australia's squad for the tour of England earlier this year, having played a solitary Test way back in 2008, a virtual lifetime ago in the context of Australian cricket.
But the veteran Victorian repaid the selectors' faith with an assured performance throughout the series, culminating in a heart-warming century in the fourth Test in Durham.
Carberry will be hoping a similar scenario plays out this summer as he embarks on his first Ashes tour.
Like Rogers, Carberry played a single Test many years ago (in Carberry's case, it was in 2010), was abruptly dropped and then assumed to have run out of time to ever return to the Test arena again.
But, also like Rogers, he discovered that when you're a batsman pushing for an international berth, there's just no replacement for runs. Carberry has lots of them - he passed the 10,000 mark at first-class level this year.
A left-handed opening batsman - you guessed it, like Rogers - Carberry was rewarded for his good form earlier this year when he featured in the post-Ashes limited-overs series.
After a slow start in which his main highlight was getting run-out in a monumental mix-up with Kevin Pietersen, Carberry eventually came good with scores of 63 and 30 at the end of the series.
And then came the real good news, named in England's Ashes squad at the ripe old age of 33.
But the journey has been far from smooth for the man with the big gold earring. This won't be his first trip to Australia, but previous visits have been tinged with sadness and anger.
The first came way back in 2001, when he was playing for Portland Colts in Victorian club cricket.
In an incident Carberry still doesn't like talking about, he was racially and physically attacked in a bar by an umpire that had given him out in an earlier match.
"Ken Gadsden (the umpire) came in and accused me of calling him a cheat and he started racially abusing me, saying `you black this' and `you black that', telling me to go back where I came from," Carberry said soon after the incident.
"He grabbed me, broke my neck chain, shoved me and was racially abusing me."
Gadsden also happened to be president of the local cricket association, meaning there was unsurprisingly no investigation into the incident, and this prompted Carberry to cut his time in Victoria short.
Fast-forward nine years and the son of West Indian immigrants was on his way down under once again.
Only this time, he didn't even make it onto the plane.
Diagnosed with a blood clot on his lung, Carberry was forced to pull out of the England development tour of Australia and for a short while it looked as though his cricket career would be over.
But he made a triumphant return with Hampshire in 2011, and announced to the world he was better than ever with a record-breaking 300 not out in a county match against Yorkshire.
Another couple of seasons of solid run-making now see the left-hander returning to Australia once more, and with a spring in his step.
He was ostensibly picked in the 17-man squad as a back-up top-order batsman, but he may be closer to a Test call-up than it looks.
Moving up from No.6 to opener in the recent Ashes series, England young gun Joe Root made a superb 180 at Lord's but apart from that had a very lean series, totalling 159 runs from his other nine innings.
A couple more mediocre performances from Root could see selectors either elevating Jonathan Trott - himself coming off the back of a poor series - from No.3 to the top of the order, or hand a much-deserved second Test berth to Carberry.
If it does happen, you can be sure one of the first people from the Australian camp to congratulate him will be Chris Rogers.
01 Nov, 2013
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Source: http://www.news.com.au/sport/cricket/englands-michael-carberry-on-cusp-of-same-fairytale-as-aussie-opener-chris-rogers/story-fndpt0dy-1226751233757?from=public_rss
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