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the polls before a recent corruption scandal dented her support. | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Now on BBC World News, it's time for HARDtalk. | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur. | :00:07. | :00:16. | |
Elite professional sport is a well rewarded but unforgiving business. | :00:17. | :00:23. | |
It requires not just talent but immense determination, and | :00:24. | :00:27. | |
resilience under pressure. Top performers need a particular kind of | :00:28. | :00:31. | |
mental strength. What happens when they lose it, when self-doubt and | :00:32. | :00:40. | |
depressing kick in? My guest, Michael Yardy, was a | :00:41. | :00:44. | |
and World Cup winner in 2010, whose international career ended | :00:45. | :00:46. | |
Why have so many cricketers suffered from mental torment? | :00:47. | :01:22. | |
one-day cricketer Michael Yardy, welcomed HARDtalk. Thank you. Your | :01:23. | :01:28. | |
career is one with many highs and lows. I want to take you back to the | :01:29. | :01:33. | |
beginning. Your prowess as a young boy and a young cricketer. You must | :01:34. | :01:38. | |
have felt at that point as a young kid, going through County schemes | :01:39. | :01:43. | |
and development trips, you must have felt that you could do anything | :01:44. | :01:48. | |
because you were really good? Yes, I think that I enjoyed it. That's all | :01:49. | :01:52. | |
you look at, that's what you play for. Look at any outcomes or | :01:53. | :01:58. | |
performing, you just do it for enjoyment. You are one of your best | :01:59. | :02:05. | |
in your generation in Sussex. You are a star as a kid. People looked | :02:06. | :02:12. | |
at you and said to me, that boy could play for England. Yes, but at | :02:13. | :02:17. | |
the time, it is more about enjoyment. I had a nigh on what I | :02:18. | :02:23. | |
wanted to get to, but I very much enjoyed the game and playing with | :02:24. | :02:32. | |
that air of no responsibility. And immediate, he became a fully fledged | :02:33. | :02:35. | |
professional and had some very successful years at Sussex. When did | :02:36. | :02:40. | |
you first think yourself, I'm not altogether enjoying this? Perhaps | :02:41. | :02:45. | |
the first feeling on a pitch or a round of cricket that it wasn't | :02:46. | :02:48. | |
straightforward, not necessarily coming naturally. I think around | :02:49. | :02:56. | |
2008. I've always been quite an intense character, especially | :02:57. | :02:59. | |
playing cricket, I have always been desperate to do well and succeed. In | :03:00. | :03:04. | |
2008 that kind of tipped over the edge, where things won't kind of | :03:05. | :03:09. | |
normal. I was struggling to get to the games... You literally had to | :03:10. | :03:15. | |
drag yourself. Yes, there were times when my wife would go to drop off | :03:16. | :03:20. | |
the kids and expect me to have gone to cricket, she would come back and | :03:21. | :03:25. | |
I was still there. They seem like little things but that has a big | :03:26. | :03:32. | |
impact. and think, it's a dream, I would | :03:33. | :03:42. | |
love to get paid for it. I was feeling these thoughts, | :03:43. | :03:57. | |
feeling guilt because this is something I have | :03:58. | :04:00. | |
worked for, I should be enjoying it, It is a dream and all of a sudden, | :04:01. | :04:04. | |
I am feeling thoughts It was even at the stage where | :04:05. | :04:08. | |
I was really disliking it. You're desperate, | :04:09. | :04:26. | |
you should be enjoying it. But you are not and you cannot | :04:27. | :04:30. | |
think of anything worse. Add to that, more than most sports, | :04:31. | :04:33. | |
you're away from home a lot. In the county game in England, | :04:34. | :04:36. | |
obviously you're travelling around the country playing, but if you are | :04:37. | :04:39. | |
good, and you were good enough, particularly in the one-day format, | :04:40. | :04:42. | |
to get into the England team. By 2008, you were being picked | :04:43. | :04:45. | |
for tours and you're going away And I think, you know, | :04:46. | :04:48. | |
that is part of the job. Just | :04:49. | :04:52. | |
by playing international cricket, but for me, that is probably part | :04:53. | :04:53. | |
of why I had the illness, It is a small part | :04:54. | :04:57. | |
of why the illness came. You say the illness, | :04:58. | :05:03. | |
at what point did you realise that I think you would say, certainly, | :05:04. | :05:06. | |
you have said in the past that there was a form | :05:07. | :05:14. | |
of obsessive-compulsive disorder. That this was sort of a diagnosis, | :05:15. | :05:16. | |
but when did you realise you had I did not for three years, | :05:17. | :05:20. | |
there were certain incidents in my life away from cricket where | :05:21. | :05:30. | |
there was abnormal things. We lived in Australia, | :05:31. | :05:32. | |
so I became obsessed that we were going to get broken into | :05:33. | :05:39. | |
in the house, to the stage... It was not a case | :05:40. | :05:43. | |
of double-checking, For me in my mind, | :05:44. | :05:51. | |
it was going to happen. It was a case of | :05:52. | :05:56. | |
when we got broken into. I was waiting for my wife | :05:57. | :05:58. | |
and children to go to bed and then I would put chairs | :05:59. | :06:01. | |
in front of doors, do all sorts... And to prepare myself mentally | :06:02. | :06:05. | |
for what would happen. That is why I think cricket plays | :06:06. | :06:11. | |
a part, but I also think it has got Even then, I knew it was abnormal, | :06:12. | :06:17. | |
but I did not really understand if I just got that in my head | :06:18. | :06:24. | |
and that was it. It sounds like high stress, | :06:25. | :06:31. | |
high anxiety that you're having to deal with and the next day, | :06:32. | :06:34. | |
whether you have slept or not, you have to go to the cricket field | :06:35. | :06:37. | |
and you are going to have to perform I wonder, and this reflects not just | :06:38. | :06:41. | |
yourself but other cricketers I have spoken to, like Marcus Trescothick, | :06:42. | :06:48. | |
the great England batsman, who suffered from terrible depression, | :06:49. | :06:51. | |
was there anyone you could talk to? Was it something you could | :06:52. | :06:53. | |
express in the dressing room? Again, at this stage I did not know | :06:54. | :06:56. | |
what it was, I could not express it. It was only when I got to September | :06:57. | :07:03. | |
2010, I was playing for England actually, I was not playing, | :07:04. | :07:06. | |
I was the 12th man for that game. Pakistan in Southampton | :07:07. | :07:17. | |
and I woke up that day and I then spoke to my wife | :07:18. | :07:21. | |
and said I cannot do this any more. You said you were not even | :07:22. | :07:27. | |
going to the ground? It was that vicious cycle, | :07:28. | :07:30. | |
I know I have got to go to the ground, because this is part | :07:31. | :07:34. | |
of what I had to do. It is my job, | :07:35. | :07:37. | |
there was a World Cup coming up, And it was, but in my mind, I did | :07:38. | :07:39. | |
not physically think I could do it. I could physically do it, but | :07:40. | :07:53. | |
in my mind I did not think I could. I went and saw the coach, | :07:54. | :07:57. | |
Andy Flower, and opened up You say you opened up, | :07:58. | :07:59. | |
did you break down? It was all a kind of release, | :08:00. | :08:03. | |
I suppose. He was very understanding | :08:04. | :08:07. | |
and helpful. The weird thing about that is, | :08:08. | :08:09. | |
you were at the top of your game, as you mention, the World Cup, | :08:10. | :08:23. | |
you were part of the team that won And yet that sort of professional | :08:24. | :08:27. | |
power and real success does not People might think, sportsmen might | :08:28. | :08:31. | |
get depressed when they are not doing very well, but you were | :08:32. | :08:35. | |
suffering depression and actually, That period of time, the World Cup | :08:36. | :08:38. | |
was May 2010, a month after that was Again, that was cricket related, | :08:39. | :08:44. | |
the frustration, incidents where I think, I suppose, | :08:45. | :08:53. | |
it was out of character. Does it come from poor | :08:54. | :09:17. | |
performance or does it lead you to poor performance, because you have | :09:18. | :09:23. | |
all these extra things going on. I guess sportsmen, sportsmen and | :09:24. | :09:26. | |
women, need that one-dimensional focus on what you are doing and you | :09:27. | :09:40. | |
clearly did not have it at times. Let us get to the point where I | :09:41. | :09:43. | |
think we can say, your international career came to | :09:44. | :09:48. | |
a crashing halt and that was 2011. You were part of an England squad | :09:49. | :09:51. | |
that was in an international tournament in England and Sri Lanka | :09:52. | :09:54. | |
and I believe that at the time you were in Sri Lanka, part of the team | :09:55. | :09:57. | |
waiting to see who your next opponents would be and you, in the | :09:58. | :10:01. | |
end, just quit. You had to get out. It was interesting, | :10:02. | :10:08. | |
we had been to Australia and spent a lot of time there and I | :10:09. | :10:16. | |
felt good being in Australia and it was only the first few days, I think | :10:17. | :10:20. | |
it was Bangladesh, that I started to I missed the first game | :10:21. | :10:24. | |
and played the next two or three and then I was left out | :10:25. | :10:28. | |
and there was a long period between finding out who our next opponents | :10:29. | :10:31. | |
were and I got worse and worse. It just got to | :10:32. | :10:35. | |
the stage where people were telling I tried my best to hide | :10:36. | :10:37. | |
what I was going through. You're taught to show mental | :10:38. | :10:58. | |
strength and not weakness. That is something I have | :10:59. | :11:06. | |
always tried to do. It is rife in sport, | :11:07. | :11:09. | |
but when it is behind closed doors, I used the word at the beginning | :11:10. | :11:12. | |
of the story, it is a difficult story to tell in many ways, | :11:13. | :11:21. | |
but I used the word unforgiving and It is about winning and losing, | :11:22. | :11:26. | |
quite a simple straightforward When you quit, | :11:27. | :11:30. | |
as you have indicated, you were not playing that well, your bowling and | :11:31. | :11:46. | |
your batting was not at its best. This is what one of England's | :11:47. | :11:49. | |
most famous ever batsmen said. He said, | :11:50. | :11:52. | |
Michael Yardy must have been reading my comments about his bowling and it | :11:53. | :11:54. | |
must have upset him, obviously it He obviously did not know | :11:55. | :11:58. | |
that you were mentally ill. I think I have said, | :11:59. | :12:04. | |
in the 50 over format, I struggled I remember coming home | :12:05. | :12:07. | |
and listening to the television and there was a lot on this | :12:08. | :12:14. | |
because there was a big reaction to As you say, he was not aware, | :12:15. | :12:17. | |
so I have no grudges towards him. Have you spoken to him | :12:18. | :12:27. | |
about it since? A lot of people pointed to that | :12:28. | :12:29. | |
and suggested that he was out of order at the time, but his point was | :12:30. | :12:33. | |
that he could have had no way of No, no, I have never spoken to him | :12:34. | :12:37. | |
about it. I mean, what you hope with mental | :12:38. | :12:46. | |
illness, whether guys play Test cricket for England or anyone | :12:47. | :12:53. | |
in the street, is that you want to It is not always | :12:54. | :12:56. | |
about how you're doing in your job or, in my case, cricket, | :12:57. | :13:00. | |
there are underlying issues. Just to finish up on the struggle | :13:01. | :13:03. | |
you have had, throughout the last seven years before you | :13:04. | :13:15. | |
retire to stay on the cricket field You walked out of the England camp | :13:16. | :13:18. | |
and that pretty much was the end of your international career, | :13:19. | :13:26. | |
but you went back to Sussex. Even though you had had all this | :13:27. | :13:29. | |
trouble, you were determined to There is one more extraordinary | :13:30. | :13:32. | |
moment I want you to discuss with me and I think when you were trying to | :13:33. | :13:36. | |
recover, be open and recover from the illness, you were in a game | :13:37. | :13:40. | |
against Middlesex and when you're actually on the field, | :13:41. | :13:43. | |
and then you walked off. I got to | :13:44. | :13:47. | |
the stage, where I have this feeling | :13:48. | :13:50. | |
I had to be off the field. I said to the umpire, I think, he | :13:51. | :13:58. | |
looked at me, and I said I have some The captain at the time, | :13:59. | :14:05. | |
Murray Goodwin, he is captain, I said I was going off and I broke | :14:06. | :14:14. | |
down in the changing room. It was just the place, I did not | :14:15. | :14:17. | |
feel I could be in that place at I cannot describe why, | :14:18. | :14:30. | |
I felt I could not be It was overwhelming and I got | :14:31. | :14:39. | |
off the pitch. As I mentioned, other cricketers, | :14:40. | :14:48. | |
Marcus Trescothick and Jonathan Trott, | :14:49. | :14:52. | |
long-time players in the England team, they discussed similar, not | :14:53. | :14:53. | |
altogether the same, but similar When you look at the game today, | :14:54. | :14:56. | |
do you think cricket is fully aware now of the intense pressures that | :14:57. | :15:01. | |
come with the game, particularly Do you think they look | :15:02. | :15:03. | |
after players well enough? I think cricket is one | :15:04. | :15:08. | |
of the leaders in doing it. The Professional Cricket Association | :15:09. | :15:12. | |
are hugely proactive in the work Yes, helping treat people, | :15:13. | :15:14. | |
but also in my case, it is about I am thinking, in a sense, to me it | :15:15. | :15:22. | |
is strange that you were picked for the 2011 tour when Andy Flower knew | :15:23. | :15:37. | |
that in 2010 you had been so bad, so mentally disturbed that you had | :15:38. | :15:41. | |
not been able to perform your 12th It just seems odd in | :15:42. | :15:44. | |
a way that they would then take the I went to New Zealand first and, as | :15:45. | :15:54. | |
I say, I got to Australia and I was I worked with a psychologist, | :15:55. | :16:02. | |
there were building blocks in place and I would say that if someone had | :16:03. | :16:08. | |
had a hamstring injury, would you potentially take the risk, if they | :16:09. | :16:11. | |
had healed over a period of time? There were no signs, | :16:12. | :16:18. | |
I thought I was getting better. I felt everything was | :16:19. | :16:21. | |
going quite smoothly. I had things put | :16:22. | :16:23. | |
in place to help myself. I would not say it was a risk, it | :16:24. | :16:28. | |
was a risk like any other injury. In 2015 you retired - are you | :16:29. | :16:35. | |
happier not playing cricket? I think I am happier now than I was, | :16:36. | :16:39. | |
because I have had a lot of support and help with understanding mental | :16:40. | :16:43. | |
illness and how to deal with that. I do not know what normal is, | :16:44. | :16:46. | |
but I would say, I can go about my business, I understand when I have | :16:47. | :16:53. | |
a bad day, I know how to deal with I think it is not so much, | :16:54. | :16:57. | |
I miss cricket, because it was But I had to move on | :16:58. | :17:05. | |
and I want to do a new career. I started by asking you what you | :17:06. | :17:13. | |
were like as a young lad, being so good at cricket | :17:14. | :17:19. | |
at a young age, and I wonder whether there is a sense of waste about you, | :17:20. | :17:22. | |
looking back on your career. You were very good, | :17:23. | :17:25. | |
you made it to the England team and then you ended up chucking it | :17:26. | :17:28. | |
all away in your early 30s. A lot of players go on like | :17:29. | :17:31. | |
Marcus Trescothick, go Do you feel you sort | :17:32. | :17:34. | |
of threw it away? No, I would not change my career | :17:35. | :17:39. | |
for anything. I would say, I am probably still | :17:40. | :17:44. | |
raw, 16 years playing cricket, coming straight out of the game, | :17:45. | :17:49. | |
there are still lots of different emotions, and hopefully I will look | :17:50. | :17:55. | |
back fondly on what I have achieved, because a lot of people say to me, | :17:56. | :17:58. | |
when you started, you could not Absolutely, I think it takes a bit | :17:59. | :18:02. | |
of time for everything to calm down. Moving into a new career, looking | :18:03. | :18:08. | |
back fondly on what I have achieved. You say you still care a lot about | :18:09. | :18:15. | |
cricket and it has been your life. Let us talk about the state | :18:16. | :18:19. | |
of cricket. You have just retired, | :18:20. | :18:21. | |
you know the county game There is a big problem in cricket | :18:22. | :18:23. | |
today, the long-form format which the purist would say is real | :18:24. | :18:28. | |
cricket, whether it is at county level in England, or the five-day | :18:29. | :18:31. | |
Test match, the elite Test match. We have just had an England-Sri | :18:32. | :18:35. | |
Lanka test in the North of England I think Test match cricket will not | :18:36. | :18:44. | |
die, especially in this country and Australia, it is very interesting, | :18:45. | :18:58. | |
because Sri Lanka, yes, there were a few thousand people watching the | :18:59. | :19:00. | |
Test match, but when Australia over last year, | :19:01. | :19:03. | |
the hype around the Ashes Series Is that not | :19:04. | :19:05. | |
the problem with cricket today? There is imbalance | :19:06. | :19:15. | |
between the big three. A documentary maker made a film | :19:16. | :19:19. | |
called The Death of a Gentleman about cricket and the way that money | :19:20. | :19:22. | |
has driven cricket for a long time. Money in the sense that the big | :19:23. | :19:26. | |
three cricketing nations, England, Australia and particularly India, | :19:27. | :19:31. | |
now drive the decision-making process and on top of that, it is | :19:32. | :19:35. | |
quite clear that the real money and commercialisation lies | :19:36. | :19:38. | |
in the one-day game and particularly That is completely changing | :19:39. | :19:41. | |
the nature of the game. It has to be a place for both, | :19:42. | :19:51. | |
you have to keep... The great part of cricket is | :19:52. | :19:55. | |
the heritage and history. Obviously you have this new model of | :19:56. | :20:00. | |
2020 cricket that has come along. Clive Lloyd, the great West Indies | :20:01. | :20:05. | |
captain, said 2020 cricket has It has just given another | :20:06. | :20:08. | |
alternative to people to watch. If you are a West Indian cricketer, | :20:09. | :20:17. | |
the money you can make by being successful in, for example the IPL, | :20:18. | :20:24. | |
far outweighs the money you will get from going on tour with your | :20:25. | :20:27. | |
West Indies clubmates to England or Australia, and a lot of West Indies | :20:28. | :20:30. | |
cricketers are basically opting out of the test format simply to focus | :20:31. | :20:33. | |
on the one-day career. I think a lot of people speak | :20:34. | :20:37. | |
about the strong West Indies making It is still for me, playing was | :20:38. | :20:47. | |
always the pinnacle to play Test cricket and the pinnacle was always | :20:48. | :20:56. | |
to play in an Ashes Series. I was not good enough | :20:57. | :20:59. | |
to achieve it... If you had the choice | :21:00. | :21:02. | |
of a very lucrative, quarter or half million contract in the IPL | :21:03. | :21:10. | |
as opposed to the steady match fees of playing in an England Test | :21:11. | :21:13. | |
series, which would you have taken? I would | :21:14. | :21:18. | |
like to think I would take the test option, because what we spoke about, | :21:19. | :21:20. | |
you start playing the game, you grow up watching this big rivalry, | :21:21. | :21:24. | |
and that is what it was about. I hope if that decision had ever | :21:25. | :21:28. | |
come my way, A quick thought on money, we are | :21:29. | :21:30. | |
talking about 2020 where the money is - there has also been over the | :21:31. | :21:40. | |
last decade a real concern about the It was interesting for me to see | :21:41. | :21:44. | |
that Sussex had a case in 2011 where the Chief Executive said some | :21:45. | :21:50. | |
of our players were approached. You were still with Sussex | :21:51. | :21:54. | |
at the time. Were you ever approached to fix | :21:55. | :21:56. | |
a match? I think it is one | :21:57. | :21:59. | |
of the worst things to happen. We had a terrible situation | :22:00. | :22:04. | |
where the game was fixed. All the guys, I think we found out | :22:05. | :22:07. | |
in 2014 that they were convicted of match fixing and it really | :22:08. | :22:19. | |
affected how everyone was. When you watch cricket today, | :22:20. | :22:21. | |
and obviously sometimes there are bizarre incidents in cricket, | :22:22. | :22:30. | |
do you think, I wonder, You might see something | :22:31. | :22:32. | |
a bit different... You do not think, I wonder if those | :22:33. | :22:44. | |
guys might have been in on a deal? I don't think you | :22:45. | :22:50. | |
start thinking that. Incidents like that, for me, | :22:51. | :22:52. | |
it was a shock. It was not like, you know, | :22:53. | :22:59. | |
something strange happens, it may be a jovial comment, but you never | :23:00. | :23:03. | |
think any game is being fixed. It is what you do | :23:04. | :23:11. | |
and you do not want to think it, A final thought about sport - you | :23:12. | :23:14. | |
said you have a new career, you're training to be a sports psychologist | :23:15. | :23:25. | |
and you have three children. Does the psychologist in you, | :23:26. | :23:28. | |
with all the experience you have had about the difficulties, the | :23:29. | :23:31. | |
highs and lows of sport, does the psychologist and the father in you | :23:32. | :23:34. | |
think, God, I actually do not want my kids to grow up to be | :23:35. | :23:38. | |
elite athletes, sportspeople? No, no, definitely, if one | :23:39. | :23:44. | |
of my children was good enough and talented enough and wanted to, | :23:45. | :23:47. | |
I think that is the crucial thing, Again, I speak at this time raw out | :23:48. | :23:51. | |
of cricket, but I still have moments where I look back very fondly | :23:52. | :24:00. | |
on what it was and I would not If my kids were lucky enough, then I | :24:01. | :24:03. | |
would wholeheartedly support them. Michael Yardy, thank you very | :24:04. | :24:11. | |
much for being on HARDtalk. | :24:12. | :24:18. |