Cousins puts 'dark days' behind him

Darren Cousins, the former Essex and Northamptonshire bowler, has given a frank interview to All Out Cricket in which he discusses the depression which engulfed him after his retirement, the attempt to take his own life and how the PCA helped him through it all. After a brilliant 2000, in which he took 67 Championship wickets, he describes how his world began to unravel:

The following summer my feet started to hurt and nobody could get to the bottom of it. I wasn't right but I carried on going because I had a devil and an angel on my shoulders. The devil always won. Have a day off? No, I'd just get on with it. I came back but I wasn't the same; it was getting worse and I was in agony. We had a televised game at Bristol. I ran in on the fifth ball and collapsed in a heap. It was like a knife going through me. But I refused to get stretchered off and finished my over. When I walked into the dressing room, I knew that was the end of my career.