I am not an expert on (anything?) women’s cricket so when I read about the story of the retirement of England wicketkeeper Sarah Taylor, I readily admit that the name didn’t ring any bells with me. I was more interested in the reason she gave for quitting international cricket: anxiety.
Following some in-depth research (wikipedia), I learn that Ms Taylor has played over 200 times for her country. All that time whilst suffering from a horrible mental illness called anxiety. Impressed does not go close to describing how I feel about her superhuman efforts. And I think she is being very brave by announcing the genuine reason she can’t play international cricket anymore. It would have been so much less complicated for her to merely say she’d gone as far as she could and achieved everything she wanted to achieve. Fair play, that girl.
That she has received the unqualified support of the cricketing establishment is welcome too, given that I have, for some reason, always assumed were a load of stuffy old white men in blazers, bad ties and straw hats.
I find myself concerned that despite all this support Ms Taylor still felt it necessary to retire on the grounds that she is still ill. Her anxiety is still very much a thing. I hope she has not simply been abandoned to just struggle on alone. My experience suggests this might not quite cure her illness.
I suppose the admission from a top sportsperson that she is suffering from a mental illness might boost the campaign, if that’s what it is, of it being okay not to be okay. I certainly hope it is. That is not my experience by any stretch of the imagination.
Perhaps one day in the distant future, sports people like Sarah Taylor and Marcus Trescothick will receive the same level of treatment for their illnesses as people get for their physical illnesses. No one with, say, cancer would be invited along to get some hypnotherapy sessions, or listen to an ‘inspirational speaker’, as an alternative to proper treatment, would they?
I’m encouraged that Ms Taylor has felt able to be honest and open about the illness that has ended her career, but I am discouraged that it had to. Lives are ruined by anxiety and many others are disrupted, whilst ambitions are left unfulfilled and abandoned. It’s okay to not be okay as long as you don’t mind being treated as a self-pitying whinger who should be tolerated and not encouraged. Nothing has changed.
