Mitchell: Retirement can be tough but help is at hand
Retirement, either enforced or by choice, can be tough. But Alison Mitchell says there are ways for players to cope with the sudden change
This time of year is a season of change and transition for many cricketers. Some, like Northamptonshire’s Ben Duckett, have embarked on a new and exciting chapter of their cricketing career by boarding a plane for their first full England tour. Others have retired and are coming to terms with the realisation that those familiar pillars of professional cricketing life will never be experienced again: sitting amongst your kit in your own spot in the County dressing room; driving that same route from home to ground each day; experiencing the shared elation of victory with your team, and revelling in the sense of mate-ship that only evolves through spending hours together in dressing rooms, on outfields, in hotels and on motorways.
A year after his retirement, former England and Durham fast bowler Steve Harmison memorably described the disorientation as “like walking out of a supermarket with all your bags and not knowing where your car is.”
None of those familiar habits are part of life any more.
Equally, there will no longer be the angst over performance with bat or ball. No more having to deal with the lows that inevitably accompany just as many highs that a player may feel during the season. A fast bowler might wake up for the first time in years without feeling like his feet and joints belong to a 90-year-old pensioner.
Everybody’s sense of their playing career is different; nobody’s sense of retirement is the same.
Those who retire voluntarily are, on the whole, the lucky ones. They may have been planning their retirement for months, possibly years.When the time comes, they may even experience a sense of relief, although that’s not to say there won’t be loss as well.
Graham Napier, a servant of Essex for 19 years since his debut in 1997, announced in January that this season would be his last. He had a plan, and would be leaving professional cricket to become director of a cricket academy named after him at the Royal Hospital School in Suffolk.When I bumped into him a couple of weeks ago he pulled out his phone to show me a photo, which he had taken in the Essex dressing room. Significantly, it wasn’t an image of his own place in the dressing room, with his locker and named shirt hanging up. Napier had sat in his customary position and captured what he had looked out at during every home game of his career; the kit strewn across the dressing room floor, drinks bottles on the bench, the lockers on the other side of the room.“One of the biggest things I’ll miss,” he declared nostalgically, “is this view.” It was a view that represented so many things.
Former Australia batsman and this season’s Somerset captain, Chris Rogers, also retired last month.When we spoke there was very little sentiment or emotion from him about putting his playing days behind him. At the age of 39, he acknowledged how lucky he was to have enjoyed a long career and to bow out on his own terms.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “I’ve been able to play for nearly 20 years and I just feel I’ve played enough. There were moments when I really enjoyed this year and there were others when I didn’t feel like getting out of bed to go to the ground. So I’ve had enough, but I know it’s different for everyone.”
Rogers started planning for his retirement five or six years ago, when he didn’t think he’d get the chance to play for Australia again. He enjoyed a celebrated return to the international side, adding to his solitary Test in 2008 by playing 24 more matches between 2013 and 2015. Since then, he has started to make a name for himself as a commentator with ABC Grandstand in Australia, and perhaps the fact that he doesn’t see himself ‘leaving the game’ as such, keeps any greater sense of loss at bay.
“It’s the friendships,” he admits.“The friendships you create from the time you play – they’re the ones who become your friends for life. So I’ll miss being in and around the changing room and interacting with those guys, but there are other ways to do that. Hopefully there are opportunities to stay in the game, whether that’s coaching, media or administration. I’d like to think I’ve spent so much time in it, now is the time to give back in another way.”
Of course there are some who don’t have the luxury of choosing when to retire. Retirement chooses them, either through injury or by simply not having a contract renewed. It should be rare, nowadays, for a player to be unceremoniously dumped by a county; player appraisals have helped cricketers get more of an indication, should their time at a club be coming to an end. Seeing the writing on the wall
Those players who retire voluntarily are, on the whole, the lucky ones. They may have been planning their retirement for months, possibly years
though doesn’t necessarily make the personal blow to self-esteem any easier to handle.
Several cricketers have had their careers cut short by injury or illness. In recent years, former Nottinghamshire and England batsman James Taylor never imagined he would have to retire at 26 with a heart condition. He is now picking up work as a media pundit. England’s World T20 winner Craig Kieswetter was forced out of the game with an eye injury aged 27. He has recently been playing on golf’s PGA Europro tour. A much lower profile retirement was that of Warwickshire left-arm spinner Paul Best, who had to give up his cricket career last year aged just 24 after suffering stress fractures of
the back. He was a former England U19 captain and full of promise. As a univer sity graduate, however (Cambridge, no less), he has been well placed to pursue career interests outside of the game – a reminder of the benefits of completing higher education before, or alongside, a cricket career. Best also gained support from one of the Professional Cricketers’ Association’s (PCA) Personal Development Managers. Having served an internship this summer, he now has a training contract with global law firm Clyde & Co.
Ultimately though, the reality of having to give up your dream can cut deep, no matter what your age or situation. Rogers remembers how upsetting it was watching his Australian
team mate Ryan Harris try to tell the dressing room that his career was suddenly over, five days before the start of the Ashes series in England in 2015. Harris was 35 and had 27 Tests behind him, and was forced to succumb to a long-standing knee injury.
“We had a couple of warm-up games and the second was against Essex just before the 1st Test in Cardiff. He (Harris) didn’t play that second game, but he was given bad news that it was over for him. So we were convened in a meeting room at the beginning of day four and Ryan wanted to announce to the guys he was retiring. But he couldn’t actually do it. He just burst into tears and in the end he never actually said he was retiring. He just couldn’t get it out. It was very sad.”
The best advice Rogers has is to make the most of opportunities offered by the PCA regarding work experience and careers coaching. Through their world-leading Personal Development Programme, the PCA has a well-established Career Development Process. Thinking about life after cricket is vital.
“Cricket is one of those games,” says Rogers,“that when you finish, there is a big void in your life because it takes so much time.What you do with that time is critical.”
Alison Mitchell commentates for Test Match Special and presents cricket show ‘Stumped’ on the BBC World Service. Listen and download via www.bbcworldservice.com/stumped