What involves thoughts while you consider cricket? Maybe it’s an idyllic scene of an English village inexperienced – folks sitting on deckchairs and checkered blankets tucking into a conventional cricket tea whereas watching mild-mannered gamers in glowing whites shouting “howzat?!” from time to time?
The stereotype of a genteel, quintessentially English sport could be gentle years away from the fact, nevertheless.
Along with a doubtlessly punishing – and unique – working tradition, cricket requires an enormous quantity of endurance, resilience and talent. It’s such a demanding sport, the truth is, that check cricket is sometimes called “the last word check”. Analysis from Loughbrough College discovered {that a} profession in skilled cricket has “highs and lows that each stimulate a participant’s psychological well being and result in psychological well being points and impaired efficiency”.
Freddie Flintoff’s newest docuseries, Area of Goals On Tour – a comply with as much as the unique 2022 sequence for which he fashioned a cricket workforce from an unlikely group of teenage boys in his hometown of Preston, UK – is a reminder of the complexity of the game’s relationship with the psychological well being of its gamers.
Former worldwide cricketer and coach for the England cricket squad, Flintoff isn’t any stranger to psychological well being stuggles – and he’s spoken publicly about his expertise of despair and his wrestle with bulimia throughout and after his cricket profession.
The second season of Area of Goals chronicles Flintoff’s journey as he takes his workforce on a cricket tour to India, following their ups and downs and exhibiting how sports activities and cricket may help – and typically hurt – psychological well being.
Flintoff and his workforce aren’t the one ones going through psychological well being challenges. Cricketing historical past is plagued by circumstances of psychological well being crises – and even suicide.
For over thirty years, cricket author David Frith researched suicides amongst cricket gamers, publishing two books on the problem. His 2001 e-book concluded that, “cricket has an alarming suicide price. Amongst worldwide gamers for England and a number of other different nations it’s far above the nationwide common for all sports activities”.
Nature or nurture
Frith believed it was “the loss” of cricket that affected gamers most – and he may very well be on to one thing.
A UK research discovered that “the entire individuals mirrored negatively on the termination of their profession, with a way of loss and resentment characterising the post-retirement interval”.
Many elite athletes have a robust however slim sense of id – sport is a big a part of who they’re. As soon as athletes retire from sport, they might really feel that they lose part of themselves together with their job. The transition from lively participant to retirement could be much like a grieving course of. Nonetheless, a research means that danger of despair and suicide could be buffered by a supportive household, which will increase gamers’ sense of id outdoors the game.
Elite athletes battling their withdrawal from sport can resort to alcohol, medicine and playing to deal with their sense of loss. A 2023 research means that whereas athletes usually are not essentially at a larger danger of suicide than the overall inhabitants, numerous components, akin to misuse of performance-enhancing substances, sports-related stressors, sports activities accidents, drug abuse, affective problems, psychological and bodily sickness in sport, put them vulnerable to suicide throughout lively profession and retirement.
Opening as much as shut stigma down
However the stigma round psychological well being is slowly being damaged down as increasingly gamers converse out about their experiences of despair, nervousness and suicidal ideas.
In response to the dying of retired cricketer Graham Thorpe in August 2024, former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa disclosed his points with psychological well being. He mentioned,
I not too long ago heard about Graham Thorpe and a number of cricketers who’ve ended their lives due to despair. Even up to now, we now have heard of athletes and cricketers who’ve ended their lives due to scientific despair. I personally have been there as effectively. I do know for a indisputable fact that it’s not a reasonably journey. It’s debilitating, it’s exhausting and it’s heavy. It feels burdening.
Uthappa just isn’t alone.
Retired cricketer Phil Tufnell has spoken about his personal struggles with psychological well being, saying that the nationwide facet “didn’t know methods to assist gamers battling psychological well being points throughout his profession”. Indian worldwide cricketer Virat Kholi has additionally been open about his psychological well being throughout an England tour in 2014 when suffered with the yips. Kholi mentioned:
And nonetheless to get away from bed and simply dress for the sport and to go on the market and undergo that, understanding that you’ll fail was one thing that ate me up. It simply demolished me fully.
However not all former gamers are crucial of the game’s response to gamers’ psychological well being. In 2016, former skilled cricketer Graeme Fowler spoke about his expertise of scientific despair, arguing that cricket is approach forward of different sports activities in tackling psychological well being.
Help, nevertheless, appears to be reactive – it’s offered when there’s already an issue slightly than implementing preventative measures for gamers from the start of their profession.
However the willingness of gamers to open up about their experiences may very well be making a distinction.
In 2022, England check captain Ben Stokes returned from a psychological well being break. “It was like I had a glass bottle I saved on throwing my feelings into. Finally, it received too full and simply exploded,” Stokes informed BBC Breakfast.
For instance, there are rising psychological well being initiatives in cricket. The charity Opening Up Cricket was based in reminiscence of wicket keeper Alex Miller, who took his personal life in 2012.
Whereas Flintoff and colleagues are doing the onerous work of smashing stigma, there’s nonetheless a duty for cricket authorities to create supportive environments that nurture gamers’ psychological well being throughout and after their cricket careers.
In the event you or anybody you recognize require professional recommendation in regards to the points raised on this article, the NHS supplies this record of native helplines and help organisations.
