The Sorrows of Young Marcus

'You’re going to give all this up are you? You don’t want to do this any more? Don’t you think you’ll miss it?’ The excited new boy speaker was Marcus Trescothick after a high-scoring one-day international at Lord’s four and half years ago, the careworn addressee Graham Thorpe, who quotes the sentiments in his exhaustingly candid autobiography Rising From The Ashes (2005), and also his reply: ‘Tres, mate, I could not give a fuck.’

One of the surprising features of Trescothick’s travails is that they should have befallen so consummate a professional. English cricket has had its Tufnells and Lewises, its Hicks and Corks; but Trescothick’s game has been so steady, his technique so economical, his manner so unflappable. Perhaps, though, therein lay the dilemma, that he undertook to tour because there seemed no professional alternative open, as Thorpe confessed became his own default setting: ‘I kept playing because I felt it would help me keep a grip on things. What else was I supposed to do?’

The response to Trescothick following Thorpe’s example and standing out of cricket has actually been pretty encouraging. Jeff Thomson found the germ of a jest in there, but Thomson lavishes the same thought to his public statements as he famously did in his bowling, just shuffling up and going wanggg. It’s arguable he should never have been chosen; but it’s also arguable that his selection was a risk in the same way as the choice of any player recovering from injury is a risk, like [Andrew] Flintoff with his ankle, [Ashley] Giles with his hip or [Steve] Harmison with his passport. At least, England did not dither as they did, for instance, in 1994-95 with Phil Tufnell, who Mike Atherton wanted to send home after a psychological breakdown in Perth, but whose contract was sufficiently ambiguous to prevent it. Saying that England will miss his runs‚ is nonsense; he was obviously not in the frame of mind to make any.

The question has been asked whether cricket has anything to do with Trescothick’s condition. I’ve lost count of the number of times that David Frith’s voluminous study of cricket’s suicides, Silence of the Heart (1999), has been brought into discussions. Seminal book that it is, I think its quest for comprehensiveness obscures as much as it reveals, the causal relation between sport and suicide being in many cases inherently unprovable. Cricket, too, has surely prolonged a few precarious existences as well as perhaps shortening them. There’s no doubt, all the same, that batting especially can be a lonely business, with long periods of contemplation before and after, and little immediate opportunity to redeem failure. Even a club cricketer at my own absurdly humble level feels it. I’ve been out three times this season: one good ball, one bad shot, one poor decision. It’s only a game, but it smarts, resonating with other misfortunes, disappointments, and shortcomings. Professionalism tends to further fuse man and sport, to the point where failure does seem like a personal reflection. Professionalism also involves a more or less constant monitoring of one’s own physical and psychological well-being and preparedness. Nothing is more difficult for the melancholic temperament to bear. William Styron’s recent death caused me to revisit his powerful description of the depressive predicament, Darkness Visible, which he saw as analogous to that of the ‘walking wounded’‚ in war.

In virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who has felt similar devastation would be lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and an isolated setting… However, the sufferer from depression has no option, and therefore finds himself like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must present a face approximating the one associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod, and frown and, God help him, even smile.

Thorpe’s book shows this suffering in a sport scenario, as he strives to play cricket while his mind seethes with the stresses of a ruined marriage. The need for the pretence of normality becomes a devastating aspect of his condition: ‘I infuriated myself with the rubbishy soundbites I spouted to the press about how I’d been through a difficult period but was now feeling fine. I’d go back to my hotel room and think to myself: ‘How the fuck could you say that? When clearly you’re not all right?’ But I was trying to portray an image of my professional self as being back on my feet. Perhaps if I said it enough times it might actually come true. Thorpe’s book also scotches the temptation to imagine that Trescothick might have forborne his problems had he made runs in either of his innings on tour. Thorpe did make runs while feeling bad, and the need to concentrate was momentarily therapeutic, but the effect did not last; if anything, sporting success offered steadily diminishing satisfaction, and eventually gall and wormwood.

‘Yeah, well, you may have just got a Test hundred against Sri Lanka but did it really give you a lift? Depression gives no quarter: there is anguish in failure and futility in success.