MY recent reading has included the Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne, an account of the privations endured during the retreat by Napoleon's army from Moscow.
Bourgogne survived by eating icicles of frozen horses' blood and wearing clothing stripped from the corpses of comrades who froze to death on the trek.
His survival against the odds prompts a question: how can some endure for weeks what kills others within days, or drives them insane? Bourgogne's story evoked memories of Touching the Void, mountaineer Joe Simpson's account of how he survived, crawling for days with a broken leg, after having been cut loose on an Andean peak and plunging into a crevasse.
Luck plays its part but, mostly, it's in the mind - the final sporting frontier, still shrouded in mystery. Which brings us to Jonathan Trott, the England batsman who has retreated from the current Ashes conflict due to deterioration of a long-term stress-related illness.
Elite athletes are not immune from statistics which confirm one person in five can expect to suffer from mental illness. Trott is the third Test cricketer to quit an England tour in seven years, following Marcus Trescothick and Michael Yardy. Graeme Fowler (former England opener) and Steve Harmison (who bowled in 63 Tests) revealed depression issues after their careers were over.
Trescothick was the butt of a sick newspaper headline: "Stresscothick" - as unacceptable as any misplaced "joke" about mental illness or physical deformity. Indeed, that was a premeditated slur far more to be deplored than the "scared eyes" comment of Aussie cricketer David Warner.
Let's give Warner the benefit of the doubt, accept he had no knowledge of any health issue and assume he was merely indulging in sledging - trying to gain an edge. Yet like any predator stalking the herd, Warner unerringly identified the most vulnerable victim. Some may laud that as "professional", but for me it is bullying, among professional sport's less endearing qualities.
Cricket has more suicides than any other sport, 150 according to their own survey. The Scottish Institute of Sport has had mechanisms designed to help athletes since 1998, and have referred several athletes for support, including from clinical psychologists.
Elite athletes can slow the heart down to half the rate of normal mortals. A key strategy is to embrace fear, and identify the specifics, otherwise the problem will likely increase. Without this, execution of technique, or whatever, becomes worse, perpetuating the fear cycle.
It takes many forms. In golf it may be the four-foot putt, while for a sprinter it usually surrounds the start, with one twitch from either proving fatal - missed putt or disqualified for a false start. The time in the set position is less than two seconds, but - Bang! - and fear is gone. In rugby or football there are 80 or 90 minutes to control fear and avoid mistakes. In Test cricket, the pressure lasts for every second that one is in the field for five days.
The fact that more and more rugby, football, and cricket is being played (driven by commercial considerations) does not help. The International Rugby Board this week agreed to establish a working party to examine the fixture list and attrition on players' bodies. But that equally applies to minds in many sports.
Unlike Britain's two other team sports, cricket has much more of an individual focus. The slow burn makes pressure more intense.
Not so long ago, sport embraced numerous commendable qualities, among which was respect for opponents - a fundamental imperative. Qualities like integrity, sportsmanship, and fairness which compel us to commend sport to our children, are under threat. The spirit of sport has been sacrificed on the altar of financial reward, TV ratings, corporate sponsorship, gaming interests and, yes, media pressures.
We celebrate the winning culture and the virtue of achieving victory at all costs. We commend "the professional foul" and promote the ego culture at the expense of team ethos. Sportsmanship has become an instinct so rare that the Olympic movement makes a special award to honour it.
"Snap out of it," is too often the reaction of those who envy the pressurised professional athlete. Trott shows there is a dark side which they have never dreamed of. No doubt Trott will be given a second chance if he is of a mind to return (as, briefly, was Trescothick). But if he fails to make his sport's targets, he will follow those who don't measure up in the real world. Target-setting is routine in the modern workplace. Redundancy is the penalty of failure.
Our heart goes out to Trott, but why should professional sport be different from the real world?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article