Coming Back to Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick - Marcus Trescothick

=== The Plot ===

When I first bought this book, I was expecting an autobiography of Marcus Trescothick’s undoubtedly brilliant England career, with a couple of chapters about the illness which eventually prematurely ended his legendary England career and forced him to concentrate his efforts on the domestic game.

What I got instead was a brilliantly honest, revealingly in depth and at times, tear-jerking emotionally ...
...the biggest characters in the modern game.

The book begins with an account of how, in Dixons at Heathrow Airport whilst waiting to board a flight to Dubai with all of his Somerset County Cricket Club team mates “Tresco” broke down in uncontrollable tears, in a hysteric fit and knew at that moment, as he realised he just couldn’t board the flight, that his England career was over.

The book then skips back to his time ... more

The Plot

When I first bought this book, I was expecting an autobiography of Marcus Trescothick’s undoubtedly brilliant England career, with a couple of chapters about the illness which eventually prematurely ended his legendary England career and forced him to concentrate his efforts on the domestic game.

What I got instead was a brilliantly honest, revealingly in depth and at times, tear-jerking emotionally shocking account of how an illness ravaged apart one of the biggest characters in the modern game.

The book begins with an account of how, in Dixons at Heathrow Airport whilst waiting to board a flight to Dubai with all of his Somerset County Cricket Club team mates “Tresco” broke down in uncontrollable tears, in a hysteric fit and knew at that moment, as he realised he just couldn’t board the flight, that his England career was over.

The book then skips back to his time as a junior cricketer and how, even just a schoolboy trip to Torquay left him uncontrollably homesick and wanting to go home. It then charts his course through his early Somerset days, the day when Duncan Fletcher saw him hammer Glamorgan’s bowling attack to all parts which eventually saw him selected for England, his early England career, that Ashes win in 2005 and eventually how the illness “slaughtered” him.

All through the book, however, despite cricket being the focus for the main part of it, every stage of his career has been, at least in a small way, hindered by the illness that eventually finished him.

So, what is “the illness” that I have already mentioned four times? Well, when in India – Baroda to be more precise – “Banger” picked up a viral stomach bug, not unusual for players touring the sub-continent. However, what was unusual for Banger was that at the start of every tour he always suffered from homesickness, until completely submerging himself in cricket to take his mind off things. This time, however, a combination of factors, including the recent birth of his first daughter Ellie, his wife Hayley suffering from post-natal depression, his father-in-law having recently suffered a nasty accident, the sight of small children begging and starving on the streets of India all meant that when he was unable to play due to the virus he had nothing but his own mind to entertain himself in his “four-star prison”. This led him to go almost crazy, and fall into a whirlwind of sleeping tablets, lack of sleep and uncontrollable fits of hysteria.

Upon returning home, Tresco eventually enlisted the help of a counsellor who diagnosed him as a severely physically depressed. The reasons for this, the fall out from his illness and his recovery I will leave to you to read about.

Understanding Depression

One of the biggest aims, or at least one of the biggest effects of this book, is education about the causes of depressive illness.

“Depressive Illness caused by stress will only happen to people with the following characteristics – moral strength, reliability, diligence, strong conscience”

I feel this statement is perhaps one of the biggest lessons I took from the book. Whilst in the past I have always said of people who are depressed or are suffering from stress “get over it” or some similar throwaway statement, I now understand that the weak, lazy person when faced with a stressful situation will just avoid that situation. The strong person will try to fight it, and when you have been fighting a stress such as homesickness for 6 years, whilst constantly in the public spotlight like Tresco was then it was bound to take its toll at sometime.

My Opinion

I can safely say that this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Even if you only have a fleeting interest in cricket, then this is a must read due to the human nature of the story. Here is a man who never wanted the spotlight, but fully accepted that is came as part of his job and therefore tried to fight it and eventually it nearly ended up killing him, or rather it nearly put him in a situation where he wanted to kill himself. Marcus speaks openly in the book about self-harm, depression and stress and it is refreshing to hear a sportsman talking in what you can almost hear as his own voice, with occasional profanities thrown in for good measure! His opinions on many aspects of his career and life become apparent, and whilst the avid cricket fan (such as myself) will hope that he releases another book in the future, focussing on his cricketing career – as this is almost a sub-plot in this book – this is a read that not only will entertain, but will also inform you.

 

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