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England Cricketer Marcus Trescothick: Talks About His Battle With Depression

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August 16, 2008

When star batsman Marcus Trescothick flew home from England's tours of India and then Australia in 2006, citing 'family reasons', the rumour mill went into overdrive.
Some reports said he had simply fallen out of love with cricket, others branded him a 'faint-heart' and some, cruelly, even cast doubt on the state of his marriage.
Here, with remarkable and heart-rending candour, Trescothick tells for the first time what really happened: how the 'black wings' of overwhelming depression forced him out of international cricket at the peak of his career - and how the unfailing love of his wife and children helped him to rebuild his life . . .
In the good times before depression turned my life into a slow death, I imagined the perfect end to my career as an England cricketer.
In my sunlit daydreams, I saw myself at The Oval, acknowledging applause for my last Test century - the 100 that had just secured England's latest Ashes victory.
The reality was somewhat different. The end came in March this year with me hunched up, sobbing and distraught, slumped in a corner of the Dixons store at Heathrow, unable to board the 9pm flight to Dubai with my Somerset team-mates.
Anxiety and depression had already forced me to quit two overseas tours with England: to India and Australia in 2006.
This latest attack was the final blow to my hopes of returning to the England squad. I knew I had run out of road.The illness that wrecked my international career revealed itself during England's tour to South Africa in the winter of 2004-05. It was disturbing, but only a fleeting visit. Then it flapped its black wings and flew away, waiting until I was ready for the taking.
Cricket had always been in my blood. When I was a boy, my dad Martyn represented the Somerset second team and my mum Linda was well into her 35 years making club teas. My earliest memories are not of teddy bears, mud pies or ray guns but of bats and balls.
Perhaps the anxiety was always there. As a child, I easily became homesick, crying when I was away on a school trip. Sent to a cricket-coaching clinic, I feigned illness so my mum would come and collect me. We lived only 45 minutes away.
Those feelings stayed within me throughout a 15-year career playing for Somerset and then England. For long periods they would be dormant but as exhaustion weakened my resilience, the anxieties grew.
At the time of the South African tour, I'd been playing for England for four years and my wife Hayley was five months pregnant with our first child, Ellie.
I don't think I would have survived the dark times without Hayley. I met her in a sports shop where she worked and, although Hayley wasn't interested at first, I wore down her resistance and started dating her in 1996. We married in January 2004 and I left for South Africa in December that year.
A few days before I was due to join the rest of the squad, Hayley had been unwell and had passed out. She had a heart murmur, but was going to be fine.
When I got to South Africa, however, I realised something was wrong. Feelings of homesickness mixed with jet-lag had often plagued me early in tours but usually, once I focused on cricket, the problem became manageable.
Not this time: I was uncomfortable away from Hayley. After a couple of sleepless nights left me exhausted, I was given sleeping pills by the team doctor and, with their help, survived the tour.
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