Despite the beliefs that some people might have that athletes are invincible and are immune to any personal struggles. While this may be true for some, e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo, most do struggle with issues that they might have. A common issue that always seems to be the case is mental health problems. There are those who manage to live with their various issues that they have. However, some succumb to the illnesses and decide to leave this world. The latest to fall under this is former England cricket player, Graham Thorpe.
Thorpe passed away on 4 August, after being hit by a train. It was confirmed by his wife, Amanda, that he passed away via suicide. He'd been suffering from depression and anxiety. She said that her husband attempted suicide two years ago. "Graham was renowned as someone who was very mentally strong on the field and he was in good physical health." "But mental illness is a real disease and can affect anyone. Despite having a wife and two daughters whom he loved and who loved him, he did not get better."
"He was so unwell in recent times and he really did believe that we would be better off without him and we are devastated that he acted on that and took his own life."
Thorpe’s daughter, Kitty, said the family "are not ashamed” of talking about his death, adding: “There is nothing to hide and it is not a stigma."
Thorpe, who was a mainstay in the England set-up for many years, first as a batter between 1993 and 2005 and then spending 12 years in coaching roles. He was admitted to hospital in May 2022 and declared "seriously ill."
During a distinguished international career, he struck 16 Test hundreds for England, including a debut century against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1993 and represented his country 182 times in all formats.
Cricket accepts it has a deep-rooted problem with depression but Thorpe’s premature death has placed it firmly back into focus. Indeed, his 22-year-old daughter, Kitty, did so much to de-stigmatise the illness earlier this week when she said in a moving interview that they weren't ashamed to address the demons that plagued him.
Sadly, these demons have got the better of far too many of his predecessors as professional cricketers too.
As far back as 2001, David Frith’s Silence of the Heart, examined the phenomenon of suicides in cricket, concluding that it's players were almost twice as likely to kill themselves as the average male and that its suicide rate was higher than any other sport.
At it's core, the gentleman’s game is a game of failure. Consider a batsman’s lot. The low scores far out-number the high. Noughts more common than hundreds. It is a test of psychological as well as physical endurance.
As one unnamed England player said, "I’ve always thought of the brain as being a bit like a muscle. You put it under stress everyday. Computing a s*** shot one day, great ball the next. It's placed under extreme fatigue through weight of disappointment."
Unlike their counterparts in football, rugby and golf, batsmen rarely get a chance to atone for a major mistake. Frith concluded that cricket’s unceasing, "tearing at the nerves" placed it alongside the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by war veterans.
There's no obvious escape when a run of poor form hits. Cricket is an individual sport within a team framework, meaning that a dressing room heightens the sense of suffering, "all alone in this together."
Thankfully, some have sought help from before it became too late. Marcus Trescothick revealed in his seminal autobiography, Coming Back To Me, 16 years ago, that he had fought on for a couple of days before conceding defeat to stress-related symptoms in the 2006-07 Ashes.
"I walked in the dressing room, threw my helmet in my bag, and let it all out," Trescothick wrote. "I began sobbing uncontrollably. I was in a shell. You could have taken my kit, my money, my life.." Words that forced elite sport to recognise that it was no longer ok to suffer in macho silence. To be expected, against your emotions, to engage in some good old-fashioned stiff upper lip.
Cricket’s tendency to institutionalise affects the minds of individuals in varying ways. The long hours (for a first-class match, players can typically be at the ground from nine o’clock in a morning to eight in the evening) and months on the road can be suffocating. Others, like Steve Harmison, have struggled to deal with the feeling of isolation when hotel room doors close at night.
It's also a sport indelibly linked to alcohol. Recreational cricket was founded on matches being analysed by opponents over a beer in the clubhouse after stumps and this social aspect is replicated all the way to international level.
After a day’s play on tour, stakeholders in the game, including broadcasters, journalists and officials flock to the hotel bar. Players are less a part of this convivial scene these days but wins are still celebrated as they always were.
Alcohol is known for affecting the chemistry of the brain and can also bring out darker thoughts.
Thorpe’s struggles were triggered by problems in his first marriage to Nicola, causing him to leave the tour of India in 2001 in a bid to salvage it and he took a break two years later during which he revealed he spent months on his own, curtains drawn, drinking and smoking. He said in his own autobiography, Rising from the Ashes, "There came a time when I would have given back all my Test runs and Test caps just to be happy again."
For some, it is coping with a break from decades of regimented daily routine that they can't handle. Those who make it to the professional ranks tend to have been talented youths, meaning they have been used to being ferried and fed from secondary school age. Then, one day, they wake up to not be told where to be and when. They’re on their own.
One ex-England international has revealed that hit by this lack of purpose once their playing days were over, their coping mechanism was to make themselves as busy as possible at all times.
Frith’s research at the turn of the century showed that the majority of suicides in the 1980's and 1990s were of players aged between 40-49 who had been forced into retirement.
David Bairstow, father of Test player, Jonny Bairstow, was one of them. In A Clear Blue Sky, his touching memoir, Bairstow junior revealed that his dad felt disturbed by his 1990 sacking by Yorkshire a full 12 months afterwards. "He was still adamant about the unfairness of it. He was still certain that he ought to be playing. He was still talking about the principles of loyalty," he wrote.
Thanks to a willingness to share experiences by people like Bairstow, the ground-breaking Trescothick and Jonathan Trott, cricket is no longer ignorant in it's response to those that become mentally unwell.
Indeed, hundreds of people within the cricket community knew of Thorpe’s first attempt to take his own life in May 2022, shortly after losing his England coaching position but chose to keep it out of the public domain partly out of respect, partly out of a deeper desire for one of the game’s most popular characters to get better.
Mental toughness should not be confused with mental health. Like Thorpe, Ben Stokes was as tough on the field as they come but didn't lack the strength to accept he needed a five-month break in 2021 - a period that followed his father, Ged, passing away and a frustrating comeback from a fractured finger.
Recognising warning signs is vital. In response to statistics showing that cases of anxiety had risen from 17% to 33% post-lockdown among county cricket’s playing corps, the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) offered a reminder of the dangers earlier this year.
The campaign - in partnership with equipment manufacturers Masuri and the charity Sporting Chance - saw the PCA distribute helmets to all 18 first-class clubs sporting the slogan, "There’s no protection from anxiety," and their 24-hour helpline number.
In 2023, 49 of the 100-plus individuals that made phone calls were active cricketers. Half of them cited anxiety as a primary concern.
"This prevalence rate amongst cricketers surpasses that of any other sport, notably doubling the prevalence in professional football and highlights the unique challenges of the sport and the need for easily accessible services for players to address concerns," said a PCA spokesperson.
Earlier this year, a survey showed that 62% of current male players attributed the relentless nature of the domestic game’s playing schedule as causing them concern from a mental wellbeing perspective, with many critical of the inability to get away from the game during periods of the season.
There is an increasing pressure on county bosses to authorise a reduction in fixtures from next year onwards.
Former Middlesex and Gloucestershire player, Tom Lace, now working at Sporting Chance, said, "Cricket is unique in terms of the length of games, time away from home and the individual nature of being at the top of your mark or taking guard, so providing players with the tools to manage this is key."
An emotional goodbye to one of the greats should encourage the opening of lots of difficult conversations.
Based on a survey of professional male cricketers, the PCA revealed that key concerns are physical heath (81%), travel conditions (75%) and mental health (62%). Long-distance driving late at night, whether moving between matches or traveling home, is a particular worry. It's argued that player welfare and performance are compromised by the lack of time to recover, prepare and practice.
In November 2023, during the announcement of India’s ODI squad for a series against Australia, India’s captain, Rohit Sharma, blamed excessive travel for injured players across the teams. It's in the interests of all cricket boards to narrow the gap between the standard of the breeding ground of first-class cricket and international cricket. Each one has different ways of doing so, a reflection of relative resources, geography and historic structures.
In India, reform is proposed for 2024-25. It seems likely that the Ranji Trophy, the country’s state-based long format game and the equivalent of the English county championship, will be split into two halves. White ball tournaments would be held in between. The main drivers behind this are to address variable winter weather conditions in the north and to allow longer gaps between matches to facilitate travel and recovery. This is similar reasoning to that aired by Joe Root and the PCA.
Rohit Sharma, in the aftermath of India’s defeat in the 2023 ODI World Cup final, was mentally shattered. He eschewed social media and opted out of ODI and T20I assignments against South Africa. Men’s cricket is a tough environment that appears not to appreciate that mental health issues are real. The growth of women’s cricket has brought about a change in approaches to mental health within the game. A webinar, which was promoted by the Cricket Research Network, discussed the different physiological challenges which women face in advancing in the game.
Fred Trueman of Yorkshire and England, was long regarded as his nation’s greatest fast bowler. In his prime, he bowled a thousand overs for Yorkshire during a summer.
This was an era when the only cricket matches on view, apart from Tests, were three-day county championships between 17 counties. In 1964, Trueman was the first bowler to claim 300 wickets in Test matches. When asked if he thought his achievement would be beaten, his response - typical of the man - was, "Aye, but whoever does it will be very tired."
Quite what Fred Trueman would have made of this is an open question. He was an un-constituted menacing quick bowler who bullied opponents. It's not unreasonable to assume he would've been aghast at the notion of women playing professional cricket.
After his playing days were over, he became a pundit and commentator. His catch line was, "I don’t know what is going on." He would be even more at a loss in today’s world of social media and Bollywood-style cricket.
The life of a cricketer involves not only rigorous physical training but also intense mental challenges. From the pressures of performance to the highs and lows of competition, maintaining mental well-being is essential for any cricketer.
The unique mental challenges in cricket include:
- Performance Pressure: Cricketers often face immense pressure to perform, especially during critical matches. The expectations from fans, coaches and themselves can lead to stress and anxiety.
- Prolonged Concentration: Unlike many other sports, cricket matches can last for hours, requiring players to maintain high levels of concentration for extended periods. This prolonged mental effort can be exhausting.
- Handling Failure: Cricket, by it's nature, involves frequent failures. A batsman might get out for a duck or a bowler might have an off day. Handling these setbacks and bouncing back is a significant mental challenge.
- Isolation: Cricketers, especially those who travel for international matches, often spend long periods away from home. This isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness and homesickness.
- Media Scrutiny: The intense media scrutiny that cricketers face can add to the pressure. Constantly being in the public eye and dealing with criticism can impact their mental well-being.
With challenges, there will always be strategies to combat these. These strategies for maintaining mental well-being include:
- Mental Conditioning
- Professional Support
- Balanced Lifestyle
- Team Support
- Mindfulness and Meditation
- Goal Setting
Coaches and management play a crucial role in supporting the mental well-being of cricketers. Creating an environment where mental health is prioritised and ensuring that players have access to necessary resources can significantly impact their overall performance and happiness.
Playing cricket can be extremely exhausting. Being away for up to three months when touring a country can be a bit too much for some. When this happens, it's best that the player/s should seek appropriate help and be taught to master the various strategies that were described above.