discussed my future plans and a possible return to international cricket, the impending addition to my family and my benefit season. At the end of the meeting it was left up to me to make contact if I felt I needed to, and apart from the occasional text message of reassurance that I was doing okay, I hadn’t. Closer to the time when I was due to leave for Dubai I rang him to say we must chat about this before I went and we did, at Somerset’s home ground in Taunton, where I told him: ‘It looks good. I’m looking forward to it. It’s fine.’ We arranged that I would ring him early on the day of departure, for a final check on how I was.
That morning I went over the plan one more time; first I would pack for the journey, then I would ring my counsellor. Next I would take Hayley and the girls out for lunch before they dropped me off at the ground in time for me to catch the bus along with the other lads, ready for a 3 p.m. departure to Heathrow.
Prior to my troubles, one of the aspects of touring I had enjoyed most had been packing. Ever since I can remember I had been a ‘kit bully’. As a kid, growing up in a cricket-mad household, with a playing dad, Martyn, who represented Somerset 2nd XI, and a tea-making mum, Linda, I had loved poring over the magazines advertising cricket equipment. I had loved the physical sensation of unwrapping and trying on new pads, gloves, sweaters, boots, anything to do with the game of cricket. And bats. I just loved bats. This time I had laid out my kit, meticulously, and the act of placing it in my ‘coffin’, all in the correct order, was almost meditative.
After lunch, we set off for the ground and it was there, around 2 p.m., out of a clear blue spring sky, it all started to go wrong again.
Hayley had driven to the ground with the kids in the back of the car. When the time came, I kissed them all goodbye and as the car pulled away, I was suddenly, acutely and terrifyingly aware of the shiver. Straight away, I understood. If it hadn’t meant so much to me to at least try, I might even have told the lads there and then that they had better go without me.
‘Oh, no.’ I said to myself. ‘Oh, no.’ Then, before I could close my mind to it, an image appeared of Ellie, back at home, asking Hayley ‘where’s daddy?’ and the look of sadness as she understood I wasn’t there. That sadness swept over me. The thing I had feared most was happening and, if my previous experiences were anything to go by, the process was as unstoppable as a domino chain.
I still hoped I might be able to stop it taking over completely, as it had done so many times before. I started to try and fight it and the feeling subsided as the usual cricketing banter began. ‘Maybe this time, maybe this time I’ll beat it.’
I boarded the bus and started to calm down and, as we set off, I realized something had slipped my mind, namely the prearranged morning phone call to my counsellor and that realization temporarily buoyed my spirits. I started thinking to myself that the fact I had forgotten to make the call was a great sign. I rang him on my mobile and told him: ‘I forgot to call you. We’re on the coach. On our way to Heathrow.’ I sat there afterwards, attempting to persuade myself that if I hadn’t been worried enough about the trip to have made the call to my counsellor, I must actually be okay to go. Except that, for the rest of the coach journey I was wavering between that hope and a growing sense of unease.
I don’t know whether any of the other guys could sense what was happening. James Hildreth certainly can’t have done. Somewhere around 500 yards away from and in sight of the terminal he started taking the mickey big-time. ‘Getting nervous, Bang?’, ‘Excuse me, driver, this is as far as Mr Trescothick is going,’ etc. I was used to it. I got heaps of that sort of stuff anyway from guys like Andy Caddick, my former England colleague, Steffan Jones and Jason Kerr, the two best men at my wedding to Hayley in January 2004 – normal stuff that I had been more than happy to take inside the dressing-room at Somerset for some time. Madfish, they used to call me, after Madfish Willie, a character in the gangster film Snatch. And I never minded the name-calling for a second because to me if people felt okay about taking the mick out of me, they must have reckoned I was okay enough to have it taken. Unfortunately, however, by now I was struggling badly, though they had no way of knowing as the illness had made me an expert at hiding my true feelings.
By the time we checked in for the flight at around 7.30 p.m., I was clinging on and clinging to the idea I might just be able to get on the plane and once aboard, maybe the feelings would go. Take-off time was about 90 minutes away. I had the length of a football match to try and hold myself together. We went through to the departure lounge and I made my way with Steffan and Jason to the nearest coffee bar. I ordered a bacon and egg sandwich and as I finished the last bite, time stopped for a millisecond. In that blink of the mind I was cooked and I knew it. Sensing I could go at any second, I was desperate to get up from the table and get away from the other two lads because I never liked breaking down in front of other people. I managed to make it as far as Dixon’s. ‘Oh, God.’
I rang Sarge, and asked him to come and meet me straight away, though I didn’t tell him why. He said later that he thought I wanted some clarification over what speakers I should get for my iPod or some such. When he finally arrived he could see the state I was in. This isn’t intended to earn me a badge, but this is a guy who had seen active service and he was clearly taken aback by what he saw. Later, he told me: ‘To see a grown man in this state was quite tough.’
At first he tried to talk me round. ‘Marcus,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to get yourself over this wall.’
I understood what he was saying. And I would have loved to have been able to say ‘Sarge, you’re right. That’s what I’ve got to do and I’m going to do it.’
The fact was I couldn’t. In between the sobs and tears, I told him: ‘Andy, I’d love to be able to but I’m not sure I can. I don’t want to get over to Dubai and f**k it up and have to come home again. That is the last thing I want to do. I’d rather walk away from it now than go over there, then have to get a flight home again, because I’ve done that twice before and it causes me so much pain.’
Andy and I walked out of Dixon’s and found a little corridor which was a bit more private. Jason had joined us but by now Andy had realized that his original approach was doomed. Now they were just listening, sympathetically but clearly conscious of the significance of the moment.
I told them: ‘I just can’t keep putting myself through this. It’s too painful. I can’t keep doing it. I don’t want to do it to myself any more. I don’t want to do it to Hayley. That’s enough.’ Someone said: ‘Okay. We’ll get your bags off. You’re going home’, and I said, ‘Yeah, sorry. That’s it.’
It’s hard to say how long it took for the symptoms of my illness to subside long enough to allow me some clear air to think about something, anything, other than how awful I was feeling. But when that moment came, so did certain truths and the most hurtful one was this: I could never again contemplate the possibility of playing cricket for my country, the love of my professional life.
I knew, finally and without a shadow of doubt, that my days as an international cricketer were over. I’d run out of road.
Transport was arranged for the trip home. It was a long journey. Whereas, after my two previous breakdowns, the overwhelming reaction to coming home had been relief, this was different. The implications of my inability to go on a gentle pre-season trip with my county were obvious and they hurt because I had so loved playing for my country. Not only did I feel dejected, but also, and, for the first time, I felt guilty because I had let down not only myself but everyone else who had tried so hard to help me get better; people at the club, my family and my counsellor, who had given so much to try and make it happen for me. I had assured them I was going to be all right and I truly believed I would be. Now I knew there was no going back.
I rang Hayley and told her
