Cricket is harder than it looks

An individual sport masquerading as a team game, where failure is guaranteed

I was 15, maybe 16 when I issued the ultimatum. I would attend seder night, the ceremonial meal that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover, but I would not be asking the Four Questions.

For the purposes of today’s newsletter, it’s not important to know what those questions are or that there are really five of them. Suffice to say, traditionally it is the youngest person at the table who asks the them, and after a decade of this dubious honour, and with no younger sibling on the horizon, I’d had enough.

How is this night different from all other nights? Well, ladies and gentlemen, due to mental fatigue, for tonight’s performance the role of Youngest Person at the Passover seder will be played by An Older Sibling. We thank you for your understanding.

Still, it beats being subjected to the question that the worst adults love to ask children: what would you like to be when you grow up?

Just not cricket

I had an answer to this one from a relatively young age. Nothing whimsical or adorable; neither firefighter nor even an athlete. I wanted to be a football commentator. Specifically Martin Tyler, Andy Gray or, as a compromise candidate, John Motson. Dream big, kiddo.

Professional cricketer was never on the cards. Partly because it was the 1990s and England were heroically bad, but mostly because I could neither bat, bowl nor field. Indeed, I still have a slight indentation in my right tibia, after being struck by a cricket ball while fielding at slip. It really hurt and no one much takes you seriously when you tell them you got injured playing cricket.

Which, in retrospect, may have been an early glimpse of one of the game’s enduring problems. From the outside, cricket can look faintly ridiculous: the baffling terminology, absurdist laws¹, the sawdust, ludicrous amount of time it takes to get anything done and the fact that, in some formats, you non-ironically stop for tea. As a result, even avid followers can underestimate how tough the game can be.

Not just the batting, bowling or fielding, though god knows England still make that look a challenge. But the travelling, the uncertainty, the sheer mental strain of trying to make it in an individual sport masquerading as a team game. It is far more difficult than it looks.

The relationship between cricket and mental health has received greater attention in recent years. For instance, one study monitoring mental health for South African professionals found that almost 60% were experiencing anxiety and depression², while more than a quarter were engaging in excessive alcohol use³. Other studies have found that rates of suicide were high for test cricketers⁴.

Being a professional sportsperson is generally stressful, but cricket may be uniquely demanding for a number of reasons:

• A high failure rate — a batter can practice in the nets for weeks and get out first ball, whether due to a poor shot, an unplayable delivery or umpire error. Even elite batters fail more often than they succeed. An average of 50 is considered exceptional, and those players will ‘fail’ much of the time.

• Bowled into the ground — but at least batters can mishit and on-drive for a single and receive a ripple of applause. Bowlers have to pick themselves up and hurl themselves towards the crease for almost no reward. And they are always carrying an injury.

• Long tours, endless travel — a professional footballer will spend much of their time at home (or, at least, their adopted home) but Test crickets can spend months on the road, away from family and friends. England batsman Harry Brook, who plays in all three formats, spent less than a week at home throughout the entire winter, according to England men’s managing director Rob Key.

• Isolation within a team environment — cricket is a team game where individual performances are highly conspicuous and all concerned are obsessed with statistics. Averages, strike rates, speeds etc. Everything is quantifiable.

• Long periods of concentration — it’s called a Test for a reason, and while they rarely last the whole five days anymore, cricket demands a sustained focus most other sports do not. Throw in the fact the fielding combines long periods of intense boredom with acute moments of fear there’s little respite.

Key once observed that fielding is “as close as a human gets to being a dog.” Which at least answers one of the Four Questions: why did England have no specialist fielding coach for the disastrous Ashes tour?

1. Note: not rules — cricket has laws

2. Hendricks S., Amino N., Van Wyk J., et al., “Inside Edge – Prevalence and Factors Associated With Symptoms of Anxiety/Depression in Professional Cricketers”

3. Schuring N., Kerkhoffs G., Gray J., and Gouttebarge V., “The Mental Wellbeing of Current and Retired Professional Cricketers: An Observational Prospective Cohort Study”

4. Shah A, Sava-Shah S, Wijeratne C, et al. “Are elite cricketers more prone to suicide? A psychological autopsy study of test cricketer suicides.”