We Are All Clapping Trotty

This is hard to write.

Hard because I love cricket and I love the uncompromising way Australia plays it. Hard because I am part of the media and yet I resent the way in which they ignore the truths of the game in order to sell advertising. Hard because so much of what should be remembered from Brisbane is already forgotten.

But that's not why its really hard to write.

It hard because a good man has proven himself better in order to recognise in himself he is worse. I know what that's like.

Its hard.

In the last two days a great deal has been said by a great many who don't seem to care that they don't know what they are talking about. Growth in their own knowledge isn't even a side issue because the modern journalist sees truth as only one of the plot devices in the telling of a story. This afternoon, a breathy ditz during ABC radio regional drive welcomed a specialist guest to discuss stress in the workplace. She couldn't get her title right, named her as the director of a completely different organisation and then thinly disguised her questions about the management of stress in the workplace, angling all of the time to introduce the manner of Jonathan Trott's departure.

"We haven't really learned," she said in near soliloquy, despite her guest's disagreement, "to understand and accept these people." It was a circular statement, completely self-fulfilling in its nature and execution.

I wanted to write about the whole shabby sledging affair and I wrote my piece in my head as I drove home from Brisbane. Stopping at a truckstop on the northern tablelands of NSW, I dropped a casual quip onto Twitter along the lines of Englishmen enjoying their suffering as it would be good for them. It was just a joke to tide me over and sate a small desire to make any English friends squirm. A few gob-jawed gropers soon took the bait. I was smiling through my roast ...

... until a Twitter follower, Andy Muir, asked me if that was fair in the light of Trott. I replied with something glib and was rebuked immediately.

A quick unveiling of news took the flavour from the white sauce. I had not seen news of Trott's sudden self-imposed removal and return to England, with my phone out of sight and the radio relegated behind rock music as I speared back across to the New England from the coast, in the late afternoon.

"Jonathan Trott" and those dreadfully inadequate words "stress related illness".

It's hard for me because it is personal. I've walked in his desperately lonely shoes. I've been at the top of my game and had to walk away to survive. We may call him brave, noble even and we'd be right but there would be two problems with that. Firstly, brave and noble don't even begin to come close to knowing just what courage it took because, secondly, Trott will know nothing of that as his experience. The maelstrom in his psyche will include failure and weakness and an inability to cope and it wouldn't matter if God himself sat down with him for a debrief when he lands back on home soil, those and other feelings are going to take months, maybe years to subside.

Even the most empathetic of you, have no idea unless you have walked in the long shadowed leaden shoes of depression. The best you can do is say it must be awful.

It is.

Of course, depression hasn't been confirmed. Its the assumption but stress related illnesses don't come with too many variations. Anxiety is likely to be mixed in there. Trott has become repetitive in his batting routines at the crease, holding on to them as though to not scratch the dirt seven times and turn in a certain way will bring him down. There are other things which have been observed but it serves no purpose to fester on them. Trott is unwell and has acted to redress his ill health.

It is galling, that despite the attention that Australia has applied to awareness raising events such as Movember - one that Cricket Australia was crowing their support for across the Gabba public address system - when the opportunity comes to do more than just grow a furry lip or throw some money in a bucket ... we let it slip by. Jonathan Trott is the story we hope will go away; the too hard basket we ignore lest it tip and spill on us.

An impressive aspect of this distressing turn of Ashes events has been the manner in which the English team management have dealt with it. As the dancing sallies of the media screamed foul on Dave Warner for his post match comments on Sunday night, England were the quickest to point out that Warner could not have known of Trott's plight. They claimed the comments lacked professionalism - a line ball call at best - but made it clear the comments did not add to Trott's grief. This was a problem he has been dealing with for some time. Andy Flower made the astute remark that commenting on other players motivations etc is a fraught exercise unless you are sharing their dressing room.

Even then ...

Before we cast stones, who hasn't called out in castigation of the man on the other side of the fence in the hope fellow spectators would acknowledge you with a laugh. Some of those comments you wouldn't direct at the bloke next to you in the supermarket.

Despite the team nature of cricket and the constant talk of "partnerships" - batting and bowling - it is surprisingly easy to be lonely in a group. In the field, those close to the wicket always seem to build the strongest relationships. It is the lonely boundary riders who spend hours with only spectators as companions ... and their constant demands for attention and signatures. Even on your home ground you can be annihilated for a mistake. Trott was a constant deep fine leg or deep third man or deep backward square. Deep indeed. Trott was a wanker on Thursday, as he did his work at fine leg, or so the chanting went. He turned and conducted them and then signed their ignorant autographs when his only offence was to be a very good batsman.

Ask yourself what was likely to contribute additional woe and then ten thousand of you take a bow.

I will write yet about the sledging but not today. That's not today's story. Jonathan Trott and the one in five Australians who, like him, are trying to find a way out of a slippery-sided dark hole today ... and again tomorrow ... they are. While we rant about whose role played out the heaviest; while we look for someone to blame in that very modern, simplistic way where every cause must have had an effect; while we flap and bluster and talk of declining standards of behaviour, perhaps we should look in the mirror first. The person in there can help. Not Jonathan Trott - unless you are a mate or family or a medical professional - but your are a human resource for the people in your life you know are having similar problems. You know who they are because you avoid them and you tell yourself its because you don't know what to say and you'll only make it worse. Both are the contrived bullshit of cowards.

In your fear, you don't understand that you don't have to say anything. There are three things to do.

Be there ... listen ... and care.

Yeah, this has been hard to write but I love my cricket and as hard as I've seen it, as hard as I've played it myself, I'm yet to see a bloke with an injury kicked in the guts. That stays true after Brisbane.

Thanks Trotty and good luck. You may not believe in yourself at the moment but lots of others who have stared into the darkness, are clapping their hands right now, holding fast that the Tinkerbell Effect will bring you into the sunshine again. When you get there, I hope you have a bat in your hand.

I believe. I believe. I believe.

Peter Langston is a community presenter for the Black Dog Institute, specialising in mood disorders. He has published two collections of poetry, is a sports journalist on ABC regional radio, a freelance writer, a former teacher and thecricketragic. Peter has bipolar disorder which he manages with medication and a combination of strategies and has experienced both blinding light and total darkness. He still visits both but lives in between.