Stop shopping at Tresco

Calling England followers. Let’s be optimistic out there. Bit by bit, with the Ashes less than a year away and, even more important, a first series win in India for 23 years in the offing, the pieces seem to be plopping into place.

Freddie’s back and firing with one-and-a-half barrels, which is about as much as could reasonably be expected when you consider how little he’s played over the past 18 months; Matt Prior is grasping his second chance with the determination that marks out life’s winners; Stuart Broad is starting to bowl with the belief that underpins his batting; he may still insist on not looking where he’s bowling, but Jimmy Anderson has taken bigger strides than anyone this year; as evidenced by a greater trust in his own bowling than any of his captains has had, KP is blessed with the positive mindset that fuels every lucky leader.

And Steve Harmison, on his day the most intimidating bowler on the planet, is back, giving KP four speedsters capable of exceeding 90 mph (whether this renewed hunger is strictly in response to Sir Allen Stanford’s largesse is neither here nor there; he does this for the living, not the loving). Is it being greedy to hope Michael Vaughan can reclaim that silken touch? Maybe, but that can certainly be balanced by the painful acknowledgement, given his ebullient county form, that Marcus Trescothick will never, should never, return.

Last Saturday brought a sobering reminder of Somerset’s gain and England’s loss when Trescothick hammered 184 off 112 balls against Gloucestershire, not so much breaking his own national 40-over record, set just a few weeks earlier, but obliterating it, by fully 60 runs. To the inevitable question that followed, the answer was unequivocal: “I am done and dusted.”

Whether Kevin Pietersen’s powers of persuasion are extensive enough to compel a change of heart remains to be seen – and anyone who can persuade Harmison to spend less time with his family is not to be underestimated - but, for now, the prospect of translating such form to the international arena still appears to fill Trescothick with about as much enthusiasm as a long weekend with Robert Mugabe. Even the stoniest heart, surely, would not begrudge him his priorities.

At least the story has now been told. Whether it is the full one cannot be certain, but at least the chain of events that led to England’s greatest casualty of the post-Oval 2005 era, is now that much easier to swallow. Almost as easy, in fact, as the mints Trescothick confesses to having used in a shameless if vain attempt to help his bowlers stem those tidal waves during the 2001 Ashes.

Trescothick’s mea culpa of an autobiography, Coming Back To Me, serialised in the News of the World, traces this sad tale in all its gory unglory. A tale of loss, fear and depression, it is nothing if not a cautionary tale for these sporting times. It is worth recounting the odd passage. Plagued by guilt over his refusal to return home following the sudden deaths of his wife, Hayley’s, father and grandfather, the Pakistan tour of 2005 found him “exhausted, emotionally vulnerable, isolated and far from home…ready for the taking”.

Come India the following February he was gone: “I never saw the ball that got me out [against a Board President’s XI in Vadodara]. I knew I was going to crack. I threw my helmet in my bag and there, in the middle of the dressing-room, I let it all out. I said: ‘I’ve got to go home.’ Then I began sobbing. I rushed outside. I was nervous, uptight and retching and I didn’t want to cause any more of a scene in front of the other players. But Fletch [England coach Duncan Fletcher] grabbed me to get me out of sight. At that point I was a shell. I didn’t care. I’d lost the will to do anything else.”

The following November, an attempted comeback against New South Wales ended when he requested permission to leave the field to go to the loo, and never returned. “It was as though someone flicked a switch. I knew it was over. The tears welled up as I started to walk back to the pavilion. I knew I no longer had any say in the matter. The illness had come back, the bastard had returned, and the shadow cast by its black wings consumed me again.” The heart bleeds.

The recent confessions of Stuart MacGill, Michael Slater, Shaun Tait and Lou Vincent prove that Trescothick is far from alone in his admission of mental frailty, never an easy thing to do amid such a macho world but a welcome sign that dressing rooms are becoming less oppressive. Nor, of course, should we be in the slightest bit surprised that players buckle under the pressure.

A recent ICC bulletin from Dubai claims that, from 1993 to 2000, the top 20 most active players “featured in an average of 62 days international cricket a year, while between 2000 and 2007, this rose to just over 71”. Participation rates among fast bowlers, moreover, “have remained consistently around 76%”. These figures, though, take no account of the time spent away from home and hearth, nor, indeed, of the way in which tours have multiplied in quantity while shrinking in length, compressing and hence intensifying the pressures.

Not that the ICC shrinks from such an uncomfortable analysis. Over the past two decades, its researchers have calculated, the average duration of a five-match Test series has “condensed” from 68.63 days to 48.17, ie by nearly 30%; for a three-match rubber, admittedly much the more common, the figures are 27.44 to 22.64, hoisting the intensity factor by nearly 20%. Next spring, India are scheduled to go to New Zealand and cram in two Tests, five ODIs and a Twenty20 international, plus a three-day warm-up match, in barely a month. That might suit the likes of Trescothick and Harmison, uneager as they are to be on the road, but there has to be a better balance than this, surely.

To watch Trescothick thrash and swat Worcestershire’s bowlers all over Taunton last night was to see a free spirit on cruise control. The drives and pulls were devoid of doubt, bereft of caution. Here was a cricketer enjoying his job, an entertainer doing what he does best: a big goldfish revelling in a smaller, grubbier, more opaque bowl. Helping Somerset finally land that elusive Championship pennant is now the summit of his ambitions. To ask him to return to the wider public gaze would almost certainly end in tears for all concerned, as Charl Willoughby, his worldly-wise South African teammate, emphasised this week.

“The illness made him a bit introverted and closed,” Willoughby recalled, “but since he’s put his international career behind him he is one of the nicest guys you could play with. He’s open, he’s generous, willing to offer advice to anybody. He’s an awesome cricketer and England definitely miss him but they’ve got to be understanding that he is a human being. They can’t expect him to come back because it will affect him again.”

So let’s be grateful out there. That Harmy seems to be as ready, willing and able as he has ever been. That, regardless of today’s result at The Oval, a fitful summer is ending in considerably better fashion than looked possible a month ago. And that Tresco is smiling again.