There will be many theories as to why England’s opening batsman Marcus Trescothick has pulled out of the game. The cause of his withdrawal has been given as “stress-related”, and there can be no doubt that modern international cricket is a pursuit steeped in stress. As a result of relentless media exposure, top cricketers have been forced into a kind of luxury shell, separated from the ranks of the fans and from real life itself. Television has rendered them instantly recognisable, and even a simple shopping trip can turn into an unwelcome celebrity event.
But the true evil of the modern system is that most international cricketers, on the unceasing treadmill of world cricket, are overworked. Some critics consider them to be overpaid. Ask yourself, though, if you would happily spend 200 or more nights a year in hotel beds, away from family, instead of on your own marital mattress? The routine of touring is wearying and repetitive, sometimes depressingly so. Steve Harmison, England’s fast-bowling giant, is a notoriously unhappy traveller. There are others, too.
Mateship is all well and good, but conversations between teammates can wear thin over the months. Cricketers are prone to get fed up with the enless process of travel, playing cricket, checking in to and out of hotels, all against the background of unpredictable success and failure on the field, and the heartache of being away from loved ones and home. Divorce rates in cricket probably outstrip those in Hollywood.
Trescothick is from Somerset. He has peach-bloom cheeks and a soft West Country accent. He is the traditional hefty club cricketer whose skill took him on to the international circuit. With this elevation comes massive prestige. He may never have craved a sense of importance, but it came to cloak him all the same. Who knows if he yearns for Saturday-afternoon cricket at Keynsham, a few pints afterwards, and Monday morning back at the desk or on the farm? Those who saw him weeping as he left a ground on England’s last tour of India will probably have felt this to be so.
There was once a Somerset batsman of equal brilliance. Harold Gimblett smashed the ball all around the ground from an early age — 310 at Eastbourne on one occasion in 1948 — but his temperament was suspect. It was beyond his control. He was born that way. We are all at the mercy of what’s in our genes. Gimblett froze when he faced his first buzzing full house of spectators at Lord’s when chosen to play for England. He wanted to run away. In later years, when selected again, he withdrew after developing a psychosomatic carbuncle on his neck. He reached a fair age, but eventually took his own life.
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This, as I was keen to explain in my 2001 book Silence of the Heart: Cricket’s Suicides, was not necessarily a case of a man destroyed by cricket. Gimblett’s personality and temperament were such that life would not have been easy for him whatever he did.
In that book, I examined about 150 cases of cricketers’ suicides, and I will admit to an endeavour to “get cricket off the hook”. In his foreword, Mike Brearley, the former England captain and now a psychotherapist, agreed (to my relief) that cricket does not necessarily attract men of gloomy disposition. We are all, surely, lured into the game by its enchanting characteristics: sunshine, fresh air, friendly competition, and companionship. It is this last factor which appears to be the most potent, for when it is taken away it leaves something of an abyss. It is the loss of cricket, rather than cricket itself, which can seriously fray a man’s soul.
“Why should cricketers be particularly vulnerable?” wrote Brearley. “This book forces me to re-examine an idea that I have long held: that cricket more than any other sport helps a person work through the experience of loss by virtue of forcing its participants to come to terms with symbolic deaths on a daily basis.”
Trescothick’s first-ball dismissal on Tuesday challenges this, and exposes the entire complex subject to the need for yet further examination and consideration.
David Frith is a former editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and author of numerous books on cricket, and ended a 49-year playing career last week.