![]() ![]() That sense of complacency perhaps extends to how Billings learnt that he had cancer. I hope people see my story and think twice.” I didn’t think I’d be the guy who got skin damage. “At home you see it all the time: it gets to 12 degrees and sunny, all the tops come off. “I’ve been that classic Brit abroad, as a 22-year-old with fairer hair in Australia thinking that it was worth going a bit red to end up brown,” he says with a smile. It kills twice as many men as women, but is 90 per cent preventable. Skin cancer is the world’s most common cancer, and is on the rise: cases have doubled since the 1990s and are expected to double again in the next 20 years. He believes that, at times, he has been part of a British culture, especially among men, of being “really blase” about skin damage. He was passed fit to play, and did not want to turn down a chance to face the Australians.īut six months on, fit and healthy after a cricket-filled winter, he wants to tell his story, sharing a message for the cricket community, and British society at large: take protecting your skin seriously. I think the boys were pretty shocked.”īefore his slip-up, Billings had planned to keep a traumatic few weeks to himself, in the knowledge that every player is fighting one battle or another off the field. “But I still had my stitches in and it was pretty gory, still bloody and healing. ![]() “I had completely forgotten it was there,” the 31-year-old says over coffee with Telegraph Sport. On his chest was a six-inch scar, evidence of the second of two operations he had undergone, a little over a fortnight earlier, to remove a malignant melanoma skin cancer. A long-time team-mate looked at his upper chest and asked, incredulous: “What is that?” Last November, Sam Billings was on tour in Australia with England when he took off his shirt to change after training. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |