Jonathan Trott looks back on the highs and lows of his England career and warns of the dangers of “going in two-footed” on a player whose career is on the line.
“I wanted to bat through it. I treated it like a Test match. I wanted to get my head down and show everyone what a good batsman I was.” This isn’t an age-group final that Jonathan Trott is describing, or a second XI trial match, or his first-class debut. It’s his eighth birthday party.
“I was so intense,” he says. “The other kids were eating doughnuts, I was just worried about batting through. From the age of three I wanted to be a cricketer. The other kids wanted to be a pilot, or a fireman, or Superman. Not a cricketer!”
It’s a small but revealing early example of the relentless drive and determination, fuelled by his sports-obsessed parents, which was to prove the foundation of Trott’s success; first as a prodigiously talented young batsman in Cape Town, then a prolific run-scorer for Warwickshire and, finally, the rock at No.3 in one of the most successful teams in England’s history.
The problem was, he never knew when to stop. As a kid a run of low scores would result in something approaching a family crisis. “Knowing my parents were so invested in my career was a mixed blessing,” he writes in his recently released autobiography Unguarded. “In most ways, it was brilliant. It meant they took my cricket seriously, they encouraged me and they were always on my side. But there were times it felt like a burden, times when I felt painfully aware of how important my success was to them. As if the only way that the family would be happy was if I scored runs.”
“Yeah, you have times when guys are a bit moody and you have a bit of an argument or whatever, but you get on because you have a common goal, and that’s what I think that team had,” he says. “We had a lot of self-confident individuals but they all bought into knowing that if we got to No.1, there were a lot of rewards. Some wanted the money, some wanted the fame. I just wanted to see how good we could be. I love winning and I saw it as a chance to feed my addiction.
“Obviously I had a lot of ups and downs but I don’t think I’d change it. For me, cricket has always been a bit like life. You learn a lot from it, it teaches you things. It’s certainly taught me stuff. I’ve been very fortunate. I was there for one of the most exciting times for English cricket. I enjoyed being a part of that, just being associated with that.”
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For a man who describes his identity as being that of a batsman, retirement will bring its own challenges. He has no desire to become a poster boy for mental health, although he says he would be open to sharing his experiences with fellow professionals if he was asked. Coaching is another avenue he may pursue but for the time being, alongside his playing commitments with Warwickshire, he is keen to do more media work, having already commentated on England’s series in the UAE last winter.
For someone who makes no secret of his distrust or distaste of the media, it seems a surprising call. Has he thought about what he is prepared to say and what he isn’t in his role as a pundit? Is there a line he won’t cross? “I’ll never, ever give uninformed information,” he says, immediately. “Never ever am I going to be in the media for my own gain – it will always be to give my informative views on the game. And I’ll always remember how hard cricket is. You’ve got to be quite sensitive about jumping in two-footed on a player who’s really down and knows his England career is probably going to be taken away from him. If people don’t like that, and I don’t get a job because of it, then fine, so be it. I’ll never change to be a slater.”
