To say I was going through a messy divorce is an understatement. I had separated from my wife Nicky the previous year, but for months had kidded myself that we would eventually get back together. I suppose I had been in denial about the possibility that it might be permanent. It had been easy to persuade myself that things were not really as bad as they were because I’d carried on playing cricket. I’d spent much of the previous winter of 2001–02 touring Zimbabwe, India and New Zealand, so in that sense life had been pretty normal. I had told myself I was just spending time apart from Nicky and our two children, Henry and Amelia (who were then five and three), whom she’d taken with her, because that’s what I spent a lot of my life — too much of my life — doing. Being apart from them, playing cricket.
When I had been prepared to really think about the situation I was in, I often ended up convinced that Nicky would take me back, and that we’d end up together. Quite what evidence there was for such optimism I’m not sure because divorce proceedings were underway. But I clung to the hope like a life raft, which in a way it was.
During that harrowing week at Lord’s, supposedly the best place in the world to play cricket, the reality of my shattered world was finally sinking in. In the four months since I’d come back from New Zealand I had been living alone in the family home, without Nicky and without the children, and I could not delude myself any longer.
For a long time I had viewed my life as virtually perfect: a wife and young family I loved, a comfortable five-bedroom home near Epsom in Surrey, and a successful career. Top England players had started to be paid well. Then, the regulars could earn over £200,000 a year, and nowadays that figure has risen to more than £400,000. I was admired as one of England’s best batsmen of recent years, someone who, ironically now, was considered cool in a crisis. What more could I have wanted? But I began to fear that everything — my house, my family, my career — was collapsing all around me. Everything was out of control and there was no way back. I was staring into an abyss, scared. I couldn’t see a way out, ever. I couldn’t even see beyond the next few hours or minutes. Throughout that week, I was seized by one long series of panic attacks.
As it happened, I’d not played for about a fortnight before that Test against India and had spent a lot of time at home in the lead-up to the game. I might have played in Surrey’s championship match at Canterbury but they’d not needed me. They had a strong squad — they were leading the table and had been for most of the season — and trying to fit in the contracted England players on the few occasions we were available wasn’t easy. I had come to dread the time at home because it meant time alone and time on my hands; time to think about all that had gone wrong. I’d pretty much abandoned training by this stage. I was drinking and smoking every day and had been for several months; that was far more my idea of the way to get through a day. Not the ideal preparation for a Test match.
I found it hard to cope, and about a week before the match finally got up the courage to visit my doctor and ask for help. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but I was getting desperate. I’d actually been thinking about it for months. My parents, who knew I was in a pretty bad state, had suggested I go for counselling but I didn’t see the point. My attitude was that there was only one person who could help sort out my situation, and that was Nicky.
I’d never met the doctor before but I think he knew who I was, which only added to my embarrassment. My problems had been splashed all over the newspapers during the last few months, and made my situation even harder to bear. I explained everything and every symptom, that I was waking at 3 am most mornings, my mind buzzing. I was unable to get back to sleep. I was down about everything. Depressed.
He listened to what I had to say and said, ‘Look, I think you’re clinically depressed. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to stabilize.’ So he put me on anti-depressants. My parents were against them and warned me not to get hooked. I’d tried other things to get me through the solitary nights, and thought anti-depressants couldn’t make me feel any worse. But they didn’t make me feel better straightaway. I know I probably should have continued to take them for a bit longer, that they might have helped, but I was scared off them by what happened next. When you start taking them you hallucinate. And I was taking them during the Lord’s Test against India.
I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was trying to get through each day as best I could. I was gambling with my future — though, frankly, the future was the last thing on my mind.
Sportsmen, especially, need to respect their bodies, and unsurprisingly I eventually felt the toll of filling my system with alcohol. Had anyone been able to observe me at really close quarters during this period, they would not have been impressed with me. I wasn’t impressed with myself. What I did was not good for me, except that it helped me escape my situation. I was depressed and desperate.
I kept playing cricket because I felt it would help me keep a grip on things. What else was I supposed to do? But I could feel this grip on things becoming more tenuous by the day. I didn’t know how long I could keep going, pretending I was okay. And at Lord’s, it all started to unravel.
All of a sudden, I felt extremely vulnerable. I became acutely aware that I was on a big stage and, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be there. I wasn’t just terrified that my marriage might be over, but that I was the last person to have worked this out. I was overwhelmed by public humiliation. I looked round the dressing-room and saw other people who were really quite enjoying themselves. I tried hard to enjoy it for them, almost forcing myself to be up for the game, but it was hopeless. ‘Could someone please, please, help me. I can’t do it any more. I just want to go away and hide forever.’
THAT GAME was the slowest torture. I reckon barely a minute went by without me thinking about my children. I tried to fight against it, but even catching a glimpse of children in the crowd was enough to trigger me off. I should never have played. I went through those five days with tears near to the surface with almost everything I did. I was constantly seconds away from breaking down. You can’t just walk off the field when you’re playing for your club or county, let alone England, but that’s what I wanted to do. Hide. But I knew I had to carry on. I knew how vulnerable I was but I also knew that tens of thousands of people, at the ground and on TV, were watching me. Sometimes you just have to put on a face, even though you’re feeling awful and your self-esteem is on the floor. Inside I was looking at my life and thinking, ‘I can’t go on any more.’
I remember a night or so before the game going with Dominic Cork and John Crawley to a pub around the corner from where we were staying in Swiss Cottage. Corky had been through divorce himself, and told me it was a process you eventually came out of. When you’re the one forced out, you fight against it. What I mainly remember about that evening is me yakking on, going on and on about my divorce. The children, the emotional cost and the friction, the money … you start to hate yourself, going on like a broken record, constantly explaining why, why, why.
On top of that I was nearly late for the start of the match. On the first morning, I had to deal with a phone call from my solicitor. He was trying to get a financial settlement with Nicky, as well as trying to work out contact arrangements for the children. The solicitors on both sides were in full flow — the parasites! I was getting letters from them every week and the bill was getting out of control. All of a sudden I was looking at my watch and thinking, ‘Shit. It’s 9.30am. I’m supposed to be out on the ground and here I am, in the car park, on the phone.’ I was still in occasional contact with Nicky and found myself ringing her. ‘Can’t we try and work this out between us? Have you seen the size of the bills?’
I dashed through the Long Room — late, late! — and sprinted onto the ground. All the boys were looking at me. They were already involved in their warm-ups. I was like, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry … Sorry!’ I got on with my warm-up, finished, batted for five minutes in the nets. I went into the dressing-room thinking, ‘Yeah, we’re batting. I’m into this … I’ve got to be.’ I tried to settle myself down and focus but I was struggling. Really struggling.
As I prepared for my innings that day — if ‘prepared’ is the right word — my attitude was pretty much, ‘Get out there