SAMPLE EDITION WINTER4 2013 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Cricket’s past has been enriched by great writing and Wisden is making sure its future will be too. The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and is available in print and e-book formats. Co-edited by Osman Samiuddin and Tanya Aldred, with Matt Thacker as managing editor, The Nightwatchman features an array of authors from around the world, writing beautifully and at length about the game and its myriad offshoots. Contributors are given free rein over subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. There are several different ways to get hold of and enjoy The Nightwatchman. You can subscribe to the print version and get a free digital copy for when you’re travelling light. 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Full subscription Annual print Digital subscription subscription (with Annual e-book only free e-book versions) subscription £27 (+P&P) £10 Click to Buy Click to Buy Single copy Single issue (with Digital single copy free with free Single issue e-book version) (e-book only) £9 (+P&P) £4 Click to Buy Click to Buy THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET THE NIGHTWATCHMAN Issue 4, out in early December, will feature the following: Alex Massie delves into Douglas Jardine’s Caledonian heritage Dileep Premachandran tries to come to terms with Sachin’s departure Marcus Berkmann plays for a side that is almost 600 years old Liam Herringshaw digs up the dirt on fast bowlers Olly Ricketts on the star of an Australian tour almost 150 years ago Vaneisa Baksh on the role of radio in West Indian cricket Raf Nicholson & Isa Guha compare and contrast Down Under successes Tom Jeffreys on the architecture of cricket grounds Richard Hobson says let’s hear it for the ODI David Tossell was at a Test that wasn’t Mark Rice-Oxley talks depression with fellow sufferer Marcus Trescothick Scott Oliver deconstructs Graham Onions David Mutton visits a corner of the US that is forever cricket Nicholas Hogg opens his autograph book and gets all nostalgic Peter Della Penna on an all-American boy’s Damascene conversion Jon Hotten talks to Mark Ramprakash about batting, And batting. And batting On the following pages you’ll find an article by Mark Rice-Oxley MARK RICE-OXLEY LIFTING THE LID ON DEPRESSION Mark Rice-Oxley talks to Marcus Trescothick about his battle with depression and ponders the connection between cricket and mental health issues Marcus Trescothick doesn’t look like a related illness”, a full squad of cricketers man with depression. He looks like a man have followed suit. For a while it seemed with very sore ankles. He’s wearing flip- to be contagious within the England set- flops and carrying an icebox. “For the up as Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, feet,” he grumbles, signing autographs Andrew Flintoff, Steven Davies, Tim behind the pavilion at Lord’s. Trescothick’s Ambrose and Mike Yardy all opened up. feet do indeed look shot, but he remains County cricketers are not immune: Luke upbeat. Somerset have taken 12 wickets in Sutton, Darren Cousins… the day, which helps. He’s had a decent, if unspectacular match and can’t stop picking Is it cricket? Is there something about the up slip catches. “We haven’t had many days game, the combination of luck, bloody- like this,” he confesses as we amble in the mindedness, unpredictability and caprice autumn sunshine towards the Harris Garden. that can drive a man or a woman over the edge? Or is it the other way around: that No, Trescothick doesn’t look like a man with the kind of people who make it to the top depression at all. But then neither do I. Few of this game are the kind of intense, driven people do. You can’t tell. It’s not like cataracts individuals whose very self-obsession or chicken pox. It’s the hidden disease of makes them more vulnerable to mental the day – in our schools, workplaces, our illness? In short, are cricketers mad? boardrooms and our corridors of power, in our tower blocks and suburbs and rural I’ve wanted to speak to Tres ever since my retreats. And on our cricket pitches? own thing four years ago. We have, it seems, much in common. We were both cut down Since Tres bailed from an Indian tour in our prime; he while touring for England, early in 2006 citing a mysterious “stress- I while working on a British newspaper THE NIGHTWATCHMAN newsdesk. We suffered horrendous insomnia, clinical depression don’t really have much crises of mood, anxiety, ever-circling space for regret. Mostly they’re just happy rumination and even suicidal thoughts. Yet to be alive and in a good place. That’s we have more or less come through, still with usually enough. good jobs, sweet children, patient wives. We have both written books about depression. Tres says: “I’d love to have carried on. I had We have both scored double hundreds for great fun while I did it. The adulation is England too – Tres at The Oval in 2003, me amazing. When you do well it’s amazing, repeatedly in my daydreams. He’s one of my when you do bad it’s worse. I loved playing heroes. I am a stranger to him. for England. But then after a while I hated touring, being away from home. I didn’t He is, he confesses, something of an like being on my own. Everything I enjoyed agony aunt for other players flirting in the past I hated. Having my first child with the same black dog. “I’ve spoken to made it harder, leaving that behind. It people along the way,” he says. “Some became too great a thing to leave behind.” people asking a few questions, someone might call on behalf of someone else to For some people, if you remove the find out about it. Some people want to trigger the illness abates. Not so for Tres. talk, say ‘I’ve struggled with this or that.’ He hasn’t toured since 2007. But he still I just tend to listen. I can’t advise on a suffers. “It’s a mixture. It’s up and down clinical level. Some of it is similar to my all the time. You’re always wary of it. You own story.” have good days, you have bad days,” he says. Experience makes it easier to know That story took a dramatic plot twist in what the triggers are and what to avoid. February 2006. By his own admission, For him, it’s bad news, TV news, rotten Trescothick was falling out of love with things happening to friends, loved ones. touring, but this was something else: a “I find it hard watching the news because vortex of anxiety, crippling panic attacks it’s all bad. More bad problems – I hate in a hotel room in a random Indian city, a bad things involving kids. Everything has sense not just that he wouldn’t get through to remain positive because the minute the tour, but that he wouldn’t get through I hear something bad about a friend or the night. It was the beginning of the end something on the news, then it makes me of his international career. “Suddenly, feel bad and I spiral.” overnight, it was like I don’t want to do this [tour] anymore,” he recalls. “Whether Like me, when the fog descends, Tres knows that’s just the illness itself that caused those what to do. “I have to keep busy,” he says. feelings, I don’t know. As much as I loved “I can’t just pull the covers over my head. I playing for England, I’d rather be at home have to get up, get doing things, clean the with my family.” He hit one more hundred car 10 times, hoover the whole house.” I for England that summer before a relapse in picture Tres in pads and helmet, with a Gunn Australia, and a frightening panic attack at and Moore hoover in his hand, not moving Heathrow before heading off on a Somerset his feet too much as he utterly dominates tour, made the decision for him. No more the attack on the flat track that is his living touring. He never played for England again. room floor. He still takes anti-depressants. So do I. “I don’t see a reason to stop. I’d I ask whether he had any regrets, while rather give myself the best opportunity to secretly knowing the answer. People with just be happy and be normal.” THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 MARK RICE-OXLEY Ah, yes, normal. Tres comes across as We should of course have thought about a pretty normal guy. But then it is quite the obverse. It’s far more instructive. How possible to be both normal and to suffer many consecutive ducks would it take for from depression. This is a condition an England player to lose his place? Bear that affects around five per cent of the in mind that Robin Smith was dropped world’s population, according to the definitively after scores of 90, 46, 41, 44, World Health Organisation.