Ashes 2013-14: Michael Carberry has beaten the odds to claim a place in England's Test side against Australia Colleen McCabe was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing around £500,000 from school funds, rather than spending it on heating and books, and the school had to be closed. To emerge with 10 GCSEs, as Carberry did, was almost as meritorious as a scholarship. What saved Carberry was his work ethic and his father. Schooled in Guyana, and married to a nurse from Barbados, Neville Carberry had been a manager for BP before he became a taxi-driver and devoted his spare time to transporting his son to cricket - the support that a cricketer at a fee-paying school can take for granted. "I used to send him out to field for me, when he was about 10, in adult cricket and our members used to bowl at Michael - he just loved batting," Neville Carberry remembered. He used to play for Old Castletonians, "a family club" as he calls it now he is their chairman, and largely Afro-Caribbean. And they still have no ground of their own. Michael aged nine was spotted by a Surrey coach, and worked his way up to England Under-19s. But Surrey were stocked with batsmen such as Alec Stewart and Graham Thorpe, Mark Butcher and Mark Ramprakash, and winning the championship. "He deserved a chance - he was super-focused and didn't drink as much as his contemporaries - but, to be fair to the Surrey management, it was hard to stick in a youngster," recalled Carl Greenidge, another Surrey colleague. Carberry's attitude even stood up to a tour of Trinidad with BWIA Cavaliers, when most would have succumbed to temptation. Ricky Anderson, who represented Essex and Northamptonshire, roomed with Carberry, and said: "I realised then he was a serious cricketer with a hunger to score runs - you could see that dedication to make the most of his abilities. He could have stayed at Surrey, but he wasn't happy to play second XI and wanted to deliver more. So after two seasons with Surrey, he had three at Kent from 2003. "He fitted into the dressing-room really well," said Simon Willis, Kent's first-team coach at the time. But we had a decent squad of players and he obviously wanted a decent run. It boiled down to a choice between him and Darren Stevens, and Darren offered something with the ball. Carberry would surely have disappeared long ago but for his work ethic - and his willingness to open the batting. Most professionals covet the middle order, to protect their average and career prospects, but Carberry was ready to open - even at Southampton, with the most difficult pitches in the country then alongside Durham's Riverside. For Hampshire he scored so well he was chosen for England Lions, but then disaster. Tim Tremlett, Hampshire's cricket secretary, remembers the first warning signs: "He suffered very badly with cramp, and playing for the Lions against New Zealand A in 2008 he reached his 100, jumped into the air, crashed to the ground and was taken off on a stretcher." Eventually, after finding he could not do warm-up jogs without becoming breathless, Carberry ended up in intensive care in Southampton hospital in late 2010, diagnosed with blood clots on his lungs. Months of blood-thinning drugs meant he could not hit a hard ball for risk of haemorrhaging, and then it was only half-volleys - and, as Giles White, Hampshire's first team coach, said: "I've never seen anyone hit the volume of balls he does. His work ethic is second to none. Thinking his career was over, Carberry qualified as an electrician (he had worked as a DJ in his off-season). But he recovered, and in his third game back scored 300* against Yorkshire in the ninth highest stand in first-class cricket, 523. He had always liked big hundreds; from now on all the more so. Carberry, who grew up before 20-over cricket, also set himself to improve in that format, as White remembers, and last season he was the country's leading T20 boundary-hitter and run-scorer. After overcoming so many challenges by the age of 33, Alastair Cook's opening partner in Brisbane will not be overawed.