I looked at cricket and reflected that the game had done me over. I’d dedicated so much of my life to it and it had bitten me on the arse. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized what cricket had not done for me. It had not, for instance, taught me many ‘life skills’ during 15 seasons as a professional. It had taught me about playing the game, and taken me to quite a few countries, but international sportsmen, it now dawned on me, were thoroughly pampered. Sport wrapped us in an artificial circuit of cricket grounds, hotels and airports. We had to deal with performing in public, that’s true, but in return we were well paid, stayed in nice hotels and flew business class. In truth, most of these luxuries were recent introductions — for a long time England cricketers were neither well paid nor treated anything like that — but by 2002 we had little cause for complaint. Virtually all our needs were catered for. We had people to tell us when to practice, when matches started, when to attend functions and when we should speak to the press. They even did our laundry. We lived in a cosy, privileged sanctum.
The world beyond cricket, I now discovered in bachelor-hood, could not have been more different. If you didn’t do it yourself, it didn’t get done. I had little experience about the ordinary day-to-day activities that came naturally to most people. I’d gone virtually straight from living at home with my parents to living with Nicky, and I’d had next to no experience of time on my own.
They say sport builds character, but I’m not sure it does it enough. Being exposed to the big, wide world, as I was now, was a bit of a shock. I hadn’t got the grounding to get out there and survive. Doing the washing was a conundrum. Even going out to get milk and basic food was an ordeal. I can recall going shopping to my local supermarket shortly after I began my new, bachelor life. I wasn’t sure what to buy and didn’t like being there, but knew I had to do it. I hated it. It took me an age to decide what I needed.
My main concern was that someone might recognize me and know I had split from my wife. I was terrified they would have read about my circumstances. So there I was, unshaven and wearing a baseball cap, hoping no one would recognize me but afraid if they did they’d be thinking, ‘There’s that bloke in the papers … His life is fucked.’ I was riddled with guilt and paranoia.
I was definitely not a natural at looking after myself. When I began, there had been no book on how to cope with professional sport. There was no training in handling the media, let alone coping with the wider issue of being at college one day and two years later touring the world as an England cricketer. When it came to real life, I was an absolute novice.
When, the following year, in 2003, it became public what Frank Bruno had gone through, it really struck a chord. Bruno’s wife had left him and taken their three children and their divorce, along with the end of his career as a heavyweight boxer, had brought on severe mental illness. There were stories in the papers about how he’d been sleeping in a boxing ring in his garden and had delusions that he was not actually himself but someone else — Frankie Dettori, I think — and he’d ended up in a psychiatric hospital being treated for a breakdown. ‘Christ, mate,’ I thought. ‘I know exactly what sort of shitty place you’re in. I was so nearly there myself.’
If I was hoping to tidy up the mess of my life, and stabilize myself, I didn’t manage it. The trouble was, I just had no idea how to make things better.
I went through some bad times. The nights were terrible and the mornings little better. I’d typically wake in damp sweat-soaked bed-sheets, with my heart racing, and stumble downstairs wondering how I was going to get through another day feeling like this. My first port of call was often the fridge. A beer. I’d get it and wander over to the sitting room to find the remnants of the previous evening … empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, a PlayStation. There’d been no party, just me, an evening of torture I’d grown used to. I felt like I was going mad, talking to myself. The curtains were closed, and stayed closed all day. It was scary.
I remember one midday hearing the door-bell ring and freezing. ‘Don’t move,’ I thought, ‘they’ll never know you’re here.’ Who is it? Not more journalists? The gardener (who I was paying far too much to look after my garden because I’d decided to try to sell this awful house, and who would put his bill under the door if I didn’t answer)?
Rather than see him, I’d write a cheque out and put it in the post. I just didn’t want to be seen, so I wouldn’t answer the door. I went up to the bedroom and peered past the edge of the curtain to see who it was. I think it was embarrassment that made me that way. After all, most people knew the wheels had come right off.
On this occasion, I saw it was my dad. ‘Oh shit.’ I didn’t want him seeing me like this, unshaven and bleary-eyed. But I knew he’d know I was inside, so I went down and opened the door. He’d been working in the area, he said, and was just popping round to see whether I was up and about. He sometimes did this. He was trying to help me get back on my feet again. I could tell he was checking me over, but he didn’t say anything. In the end, he persuaded me to go and help him do some gardening.
If he was seriously worried about me, and I’m pretty sure he was, he had every reason to be. I was further away from getting better than ever. Later, when my life improved, if I ever woke up facing a tough day, I’d look back and tell myself nothing could be as hard as getting through what I did then.
I WAS THE youngest in our family and often the most junior member of the teams I played in when I was growing up, so perhaps I came to accept there were always others around to take the big decisions and occupy the limelight. I was happy enough keeping quiet in the background. But in cricketing terms, I was reckoned to have a good head on my shoulders from a young age. In fact younger brothers in sporting families often grow up fast by playing alongside their elder siblings — Robin Smith and Ben Hollioake, for example — and it certainly helped me.
Being the youngest of three boys — Ian was four years older and Alan two -1 had to fight for every little reward I could get. Being bigger and stronger, they dominated our games of football and cricket, and I had to learn fast and work extra hard just to keep up. I wasn’t exceptionally stylish or talented but I was tenacious, determined and confident. We were always encouraged by my father, who played sport at the weekends, and my mother who, in later years, became an expert scorer at our various cricket matches.
Things weren’t easy for the family. My father worked as a draughtsman and later as an engineering surveyor, but I don’t think he earned a particularly big salary. I shared a room with one of my brothers until I was eight, when we had an extension built and we all got our own bedroom. With fields at the back of the garden we had lots of space to play in and, frankly, that was all we wanted.
We were lucky to live in a village that had several youth teams. Wrecclesham, a couple of miles west of Farnham in Surrey, had four sides from the under-11s to the under-17s, and every Friday night up to 40 kids would turn up for practice sessions run by a guy called Tony Hughes. I remember once playing for the under-17s at the age of eight. Someone dropped out and, as we only lived up the road from the ground, I was asked if I’d go along. I was very nervous. I didn’t have to bat — they’d stuck me down at No 11 — but I took a catch, pretty straightforward, but was thrilled when these big lads patted me on the head and said, ‘Great catch, youngster.’ It felt like I’d done something really good. Like my father, but not my brothers, I batted left-handed, though I was pretty much right-handed at everything else.
I was 13 when I first played for Wrecclesham first XI, the village team, in the I’Anson League. The team was basically made up of adults. Late in my second season, I scored my first century at a lovely ground down at Frensham when we’d only needed around 150 to win. I think I was the youngest person ever to score a hundred in the I’Anson League, but I never played for the village again. Alan and Ian were already turning out for Farnham where there was a better standard of cricket, and I was encouraged to follow them by a chap called Jim Banks, who was involved