Harrowing tale as rejection and depression took its toll on Foxy
Derek Pringle says Graeme Fowler spares nothing or no one as he recounts his battle with mental health
Lord’s, where England are playing their final Test against Sri Lanka, provided Graeme Fowler with arguably the highlight of his cricket career. Few hundreds were scored against the mighty West Indies sides of the Eighties but Foxy, as he shall mostly hitherto be known, made a fine 106 in the first innings.
It was the kind of scrapping knock batsmen had to play against the Windies’ fast bowlers back then if they were to succeed, bruises occurring at about the same frequency as boundaries. But Foxy, as gutsy as he was hyperactive, overcame the intimidation.
England, on top until the final day, famously lost that match when West Indies chased down 344 for the loss of one wicket, still the highest fourth innings score to win a Test at Lord’s. But that was the fault of the bowling attack, of which I was one.
In his book, Absolutely Foxed, Fowler reveals how much of his hundred was made in the kind of pain only batsmen who have been hit flush in the “yarbles” by a fast bowler know about, after a Joel Garner exocet had smashed his box. No detail is spared.
The melding of gore and humour is something of a Foxy speciality, then as now, and his book is full of such juxtapositions. Like the time he bit Renate Blauel, Elton John’s wife, in New Zealand when both England and Elton were touring there in 1984. It caused such a hoo-ha that Ian Botham had to chin him just to get him under control and back to the team hotel.
Surprisingly, the incident caused him and Elton to grow closer, the latter subsequently having an influence on Foxy’s wardrobe.
The thrills and spills of life as a cricketer in the Eighties makes for a rollicking read, but it is sandwiched by the more serious, and later episodes, of Foxy’s mental illness, which he says arrived virtually unannounced about a dozen years ago.
He marks his mental health daily, out of 20, low being bad, high being good. So far, the range has swung between 6 to 16. As a game, cricket is infamous for having more recorded suicides than any other, though Foxy reveals he has not yet felt the urge to join that statistic. Chillingly, though, he does admit there have been times when he has wished he was dead.
Fowler says it began with a winter cough he couldn’t shake, though it needed his wife, Sarah, to point out that cough or not he had not uttered a word to her or his three daughters for two weeks. Cocooned inside his head, he simply hadn’t noticed.
He is reluctant to blame his life in cricket for his depression, though intriguingly for clue-spotters, there is a moment when he is batting for Lancashire against Warwickshire and he stays on 26 for 89 minutes without realising it. Recherché de temps perdu indeed.
Mental illness is still not that well understood in terms of its causes and triggers, but obviously a complex chemistry is at play in the brain – an imbalance.Yet, it is of those intangible diseases that the public at large have been slow to empathise with or even to understand, though that is changing.
In his book, Foxy mentions Marcus Trescothick, a fellow sufferer. I covered the England tour that Trescothick suddenly withdrew from and I remember his final innings in Vadodara against an Invitation XI, a few hours before he flew
However phlegmatic a player is – and Foxy was rarely that during his playing days, being a fizzing Catherine wheel of energy – it can still be like a bereavement when it all ends