My depression is an ongoing battle - Lou Vincent

"People say, 'Pull yourself together, move on'. I wish that it was that simple. You try and forget, but it [depression] takes over your whole life," Lou Vincent tells Will Hawkes in an interview in the Independent. It's a battle Vincent is winning at present, but something he has to keep working at, he says.

"Getting away from the game was the right thing at the time, but, to be honest, things got worse and worse," he says ... Vincent took on some building work, working on a friend's home, before he got a job tiling at the new BBC site in Salford ... "After the 160th apartment I did at the BBC, I felt like 'I'm not really sure this is fulfilling my life'," he says. "But I did some more building work, more small stuff: I was digging a hole about a metre deep, I was halfway through it in the pissing rain and I thought – 'I'll just jump in the hole myself, this is not that great'."

A friend arranged for Vincent to return to New Zealand and play in Auckland. It proved to be a turning point. "I was like 'no way', but I went," he says. "When I got there I had to borrow pads, a bat, the gloves, I had two left shoes! I went to the training session, and I kept missing the ball. I was in tears: 'What am I doing? This is so embarrassing.'