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Cricket's Black dog
The story of depression among cricketers
Here are some troubling statistics. English cricketers are almost twice as likely to commit suicide as the average male in this country. Together with farmers, who have the means to end their lives readily to hand – a gun – and dentists, who have to peer into people’s mouths every day of their working lives, more cricketers commit suicide per capita than any other occupation in England. To date 151 former first-class cricketer. have taken their lives. But why? Is it the game of cricket that is to blame or are cricketers by the very nature of their occupation more susceptible to depression and thoughts of suicide? Why should cricketers, who spend their days in healthy, outdoor pursuit, be more vulnerable than anybody else?
Cricket is a game dominated by failure. In no other sport can ignominy be suffered so publicly. A centre-forward can miss an open goal but still score the winner in the 90th minute. A rugby player can drop the ball on the try line but still nail a penalty to win the match with the last kick of the game. A golfer can miss the fairway at the last hole but still chip in from the bunker to secure the Claret Jug. A tennis player can serve a double fault at match point but still serve out a winner a few points later.
A batsman trudges back to the pavilion with the dreaded 0 already on the scoreboard. There are no second chances for him. A bowler who leaks six runs an over is unlikely to be bowling for long. Bradman’s Test average was a fraction under 100. Statistically, he should have scored a century every time he went to the wicket. But of course, he didn’t. It is calculated that in fact he failed two times out of three. So, what does that say about all the other cricketers not so blessed? Cricket is a merciless mistress who condemns many of her devotees to a bleakness of mood that is difficult to shrug off and dangerous to let fester.
All sportsmen and women face the inevitable moment of retirement, either by choice or forced upon them, at an age, usually in their early thirties, with much of their life stretching out in front of them. So why do cricketers, by and large, find the transition to ordinary life divorced from the roar of the crowd and the smell of the greasepaint more difficult than in other sports? Cricket is a long game, lasting one, two, three, four or five days and the six months of the season can seem like a marathon. Cricketers spend long hours in the dressing room or out there in the middle with their team-mates, such that the team environment can start to resemble a surrogate family. And when a player is summarily banished from that intimate cocoon, the wrench can be almost too hard to bear. Life has lost its meaning; nothing can replace the joy of playing the game they love. For some, who have never known any other life that always defined them, it can seem a very bleak place indeed.
The history of depression and its treatment has undergone many developments since the age of Hippocrates, commonly regarded as the Father of Medicine, in Ancient Greece, through Roman times and even up until the Mediaeval Age, when superstition and religious beliefs held sway. The condition was known as Melancholia, an imbalance of the four humours, which formed the basis of human life. The Age of Reason gave birth to a more empirical and scientific approach; depression was a disorder of the nerves, and it was called Hypochondria or Hysteria or the Vapours. The discovery of electricity brought about another shift in emphasis. The nerves, electrical impulses, could be carefully readjusted using electric currents passed through the body, the precursor of Electro-Convulsive Treatment, still in use today. Then came the Age of Reason, led by Sigmund Freud, who believed the patient was suffering for a reason. That is why he burrowed around in the subconscious to discover a loss or a shock in childhood. Psychoanalysis was now the way forward. Then came the Age of Pharma. Prozac, and its offspring of tranquilisers and anti-depressants, sought to adjust by chemical means the imbalance in the brain. Nowadays CBT – talking therapies – is all the rage, as well as Mindfulness, which encourages the patient to live in the moment and not reflect on the past or peer too deeply into the future.
So, what have we learned on this journey from Hippocrates to GlaxoSmithKline? The search for a reason, and therefore a cure, for depression goes on, and that is, well, depressing in itself. Nobody truly knows what is going on in someone else’s mind. Sometimes we don’t know what is going on in our own mind. How could the dreadful tragedy of Graham Thorpe’s suicide have been prevented? It’s the devil of a question to answer what’s wrong when nothing is right.
A number of high-profile players have gone public with their struggles with depression and the author draws on their experiences, as well as those of a number of well-known figures in the game, including David Frith, John Barclay, Jeremy Snape, Graeme Fowler, Barry Richards, David Nash, Huw Turbervill and Ian Thomas from the Professional Cricketers’ Association, who agreed to be interviewed, in a wide-ranging, yet deeply personal, examination of a problem that simply won’t go away. As a former first-class cricketer, himself, who has battled with depression for most of his life, the author knows of what he speaks and has attempted to explore the high incidence of the illness in this maddening game of ours and to come to some conclusion to the perplexing conundrum at the heart of it all – is it cricket or cricketers that is the problem?
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Copies of the book, costing £18.50, can be obtained from Pitch Publishing via the link below:
https://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/crickets-black-dog