Do You Know What?

by Andrew Flintoff

  What I didn’t need was someone trying to coach me or interfere when I was playing well, or a dressing room of people patting me on the back or buying me drinks after I’d scored a hundred. I never understood that – it’s not the lad who scored a hundred who needs a drink, it’s the lad who scored no runs who needs looking after. I’m fine, I got a ton, he’s not, he got nothing. That’s when the coach earns his corn, when players are struggling. When a teammate was having a really bad run of form and really trying to make things better, I felt for them, although my empathy wasn’t always reciprocated. You shouldn’t wash your hands of them or drop players who are in a trough, although I played with a couple of coaches who were of that view.

  Bumble played hard and took cricket very seriously, but he also saw it as fun. Once, I got hit in the nuts playing in Guernsey and when we came off for rain I was still doubled up in agony. He passed me a glass of water and said, ‘Just put your balls in there.’ So I’m sat there in the dressing room, with my balls in a pint pot, surrounded by my Lancashire heroes – Neil Fairbrother, Wasim Akram – and Bumble’s giggling in the corner. Just as I put the glass down, Gary Yates walks in and says, ‘Anybody got a drink?’ Everyone looks at me and Bumble is gesturing towards the glass, with this wicked grin on his face. Quick as a flash I say, ‘Here you go, Gary, get stuck in…’

  I could write a whole book about Bumble. In his last game as Lancashire coach, we were playing at Derby, I got two ducks in one day and we got hammered. On the morning of the last day, we destroyed his clothes – slit his undies, cut the ends off his socks, pulled all the buttons off his shirt. The problem was, he used to go mad if we got beaten.

  So we’re all sat in the dressing room, trying to look sheepish, because we’ve just been taken to the cleaners, and he’s going off on one. He’s pointing to us one by one – ‘You were fuckin’ hopeless! And as for you!’ – while he’s trying to get dressed. He’s pulling his undies up, and they’ve got no crotch, but he’s still not stopping – ‘And you, you fucker! Bloody useless!’ When he pulls his socks on, his feet go right through them, but he’s still going – ‘And what kind of fuckin’ shot was that?’ The final straw is when he puts his shirt on, he’s trying to do the buttons up and there aren’t any. He stormed off after that. Turned out the shirt was a present from his missus.

  Another time, I was touring Pakistan with England, and Bumble organised a quiz. Everyone was there – the media, the players – apart from Duncan Fletcher, the coach, which was weird, but not surprising. Me and Harmy turned up late, came last and got mocked by Bumble all night. We were presented with these mosque alarm clocks as booby prizes. So I said to Harmy, ‘You and me are going to have some fun with these…’

  We were staying in the same hotel, so I went to reception and got a key for Bumble’s room. I set one of the alarm clocks for 2:30 a.m. and stuffed it behind his TV, set the other one for 4:30 a.m. and hid it behind his curtains, before disappearing from the scene of the crime, sharpish. Right on cue, we could hear this alarm clock going off – which was the very loud sound of people being called to prayer – and apparently Bumble was stumbling around his room in the dark, trying to turn the TV off, even though it wasn’t even on. The noise woke the bloke in the next room, so he’s knocking on Bumble’s door and shouting. Bumble opens his door in his pants, starts shouting back at him and they nearly have a fight in the corridor. Bumble eventually finds the alarm clock, turns it off, goes back to sleep, and two hours later it all happens again.

  I remember Bumble telling me, ‘Don’t do anything your mum wouldn’t be proud of.’ I’ve done a lot of things she definitely wasn’t proud of, but he taught me so many other lessons that I took to heart and still heed to this day. Bumble practised what he preached, and if he thought I could do something, I’d throw the kitchen sink at it, give it everything. Just as if Kay Mellor thinks I’ve got it in me to play one of the lead roles in a musical she’s written, and Nick Lloyd Webber thinks I can sing his songs, then I’ll give it my best shot.

  CHAPTER 7

  ENJOYING GETTING PUNCHED

  Dealing with depression

  I’m not aggressive, in the sense that you won’t find me fighting in the street, so boxing was playing against type. I felt terrible at times, travelling to the gym, knowing I was going to spar someone better than me. But the thought of getting beaten up was usually worse than the reality. There were times in training when I enjoyed getting punched. In fact, I enjoyed getting punched more than I enjoyed punching people. I’d take one on the chin and think, ‘Come on then, let’s have another one!’ A psychologist might look at me and decide that I was a bit of a masochist. And they might be right.

  When the injuries started during my cricket career, I enjoyed them. Strange as it sounds, I revelled in the pain, because it meant having to push myself as far as I possibly could. In fact, I was playing through pain all the time, certainly in the latter part of my career. I’d be injected to the eyeballs, so that when I stepped on the pitch, I was playing against myself, more so than against the opposition. That was the main game for me, not the actual cricket. It didn’t matter if I was bowling to Sachin Tendulkar or Ricky Ponting, it was my game, nobody else’s. I was so proud every time I pulled on a Lancashire or England shirt, but everybody else on the pitch was just a pawn.

  I never experienced pain in boxing as bad as I experienced in cricket. Nowhere near. Boxing was similar to cricket in that it was a case of, ‘How much can I take?’ But being punched in the face is more of a shock than a pain. You’ll be sitting there after a spar or a fight, thinking, ‘How did I get this black eye? I didn’t even feel anything.’ In contrast, playing cricket was often excruciating. I played 79 Test matches and people say to me, ‘You must be gutted you didn’t play more.’ Not at all. I couldn’t get out of bed some mornings.

  In a weird way, I enjoyed hitting rock bottom more than I enjoyed being at the top. I didn’t like the sliding part, but I relished the challenge of piecing myself back together again, getting back to where I wanted to be. In a sick way, I found it fun. I think that’s why it happened quite a bit during my cricket career, maybe unconsciously on purpose, almost as if I was self-harming.

  My cricket career was a mixture of massive highs and staggering lows, and my mind has fluctuated in much the same way. Maybe it needed to be that way. If everything had played out in monotone, I would have been bored. I love the bones off Alastair Cook, he’s an amazing lad and an amazing cricketer, probably England’s best-ever batsman, but the way he played, and continues to play, wasn’t for me. I needed my cricket to be boom or bust.

  I also wasn’t good enough to play like Geoffrey Boycott, but I also enjoyed entertaining. What’s the point of playing sport if you’re not entertaining people? If Boycott was batting in my garden, I’d draw the curtains. Floyd Mayweather was the same in boxing. He was a genius, but he boxed not to get punched. I understand that, I’ve been punched and it’s horrible. But I never got the sense that he loved what he did. He must have done, to keep going as long as he did, but he seemed far more interested in the lifestyle and the money than entertaining the fans. I could appreciate his greatness, but I would never have paid money to watch him fight.

  I desperately wanted to win, but I also wanted to enjoy what I was doing, which meant I might be out first ball or score a hundred. That was part of the fun, neither me nor the crowd knowing what was going to happen. I enjoyed the adulation, the roar of the crowd when I hit a four or a six. That’s one of the best sounds you can possibly hear, and I wish I could still hear it now. When the Barmy Army started chanting, I was going to have a crack. If they put a man back, I was going to try to hit it into the crowd. If a fast bowler pitched it up, I was going to try to hit it back over his head. I dug in a few times, when the state of the match decreed it, but I’d get bored and have to play a big shot, just to keep myself interested, never mind the punters.

  Although the highs were brilliant, they were very shortlived. I’d com
e off the field after an England victory and think, ‘Is that it? I’m already over this. What happens next?’ Everyone harks on about what happened after the 2005 Ashes when we won them for the first time in almost 20 years – the open-top bus parade through London, the reception at Number 10, receiving an MBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. But I wasn’t bothered about what happened afterwards – the celebrations, the adulation, the awards. The enjoyment came from doing it, and I reckon the reason I got so smashed afterwards was partly out of embarrassment. Even when people talk about that series now, I cringe inside. I don’t want to still be dining out on it. Let it go, move on.

  Every day of that series, I loved walking out there and doing battle with the Australians, and I wanted that feeling to last for ever. In between games, I went to Devon or France, so I didn’t really know how big a stir the series was causing among the public. I did the odd interview, but once I’d done it, it just disappeared into the abyss. I never saw or read it, so it was like it never happened. It was only when it was over that it hit me how big a deal it had been. I’d just been playing cricket, but when that summer was over, everyone wanted a piece of me.

  But I didn’t want people telling me how good I’d been or slapping me on the back, and I wasn’t buzzing and excited like my teammates. I just felt a bit guilty, almost as if I didn’t deserve it. I’d done what I had to do and wanted to go home. That said, I wasn’t happy that it was finished either. Why would I be?

  I didn’t fear hitting rock bottom in terms of form or fitness because I knew I could drag myself back up again. But I didn’t even know I had depression. The cricket field was an awful place to be when I was playing badly, because it meant so much. But I could handle it, because my unhappiness was related to my form. The cricket field was safe. Even if things were going badly off the field – if my ex-girlfriend had sold a story to the News of the World or I was in trouble for being on the lash – I could not wait to play again. Cricket was what I did, what I knew, my whole identity. When I walked onto that field, you couldn’t touch me, whether I was bowling to the best batter in the world and he was hitting me all over the park, or batting against the best bowler in the world and he was whistling the ball past my ears.

  But there were times when I knew something was wrong with me, and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. This is one of the things people don’t understand about depression. It’s not like being unhappy when there’s a reason. When you’re a cricketer and you’re unhappy with your form, you can fix it by hitting a century or taking five wickets. Depression is more like a numbness. At the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, I took a wicket against the West Indies and didn’t even celebrate. When Chris Gayle hit my first ball for six, I thought, ‘Ah well, that’s modern cricket, the game has changed…’ I went for tests, because I thought I might have a physical illness. Because I had no energy, I thought I might be diabetic or something, but the results came back all clear. Nobody suggested I might have a mental illness.

  * * *

  I’d been struggling with my knee for a long time before the 2009 Ashes series in England, so I had to decide whether to miss the series altogether and maybe give myself another two or three years in the sport, or play the six weeks. I decided to play, because I couldn’t run away from being beaten 5–0 in the previous series Down Under. But during that series it got to the point where my missus was having to dress me in the morning. I couldn’t move my leg, so I was trying to compensate by using other parts of my body, some of which I don’t think I’d ever used. I was just so, so sore.

  I somehow managed to play four of the five games in the series, but the writing was on the wall and I knew it was coming to an end. When you’re playing, the games come so thick and fast that you take it all for granted. You stand in the field and you don’t take things in or realise how lucky you are. It was only when I thought every day on a cricket field might be my last that I started to cherish every moment I was out there. I’d take in the ground, listen to the murmur of the crowd, look at the badge on my shirt, stare at my cap for ages. I felt like a child again, looking around and thinking, ‘How good is this?’ It’s like that quote from golfing great Ben Hogan: ‘As you walk down the fairway of life, you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.’ I realised that too late in my cricket career, but at least I realised it.

  When I took five wickets in the second Test at Lord’s, I did that celebration where I fell to my knees with my arms outstretched. I’m a bit embarrassed about it, because it was completely self-indulgent. I regard myself as a team player, but on this occasion I didn’t want any of my team around me. This was my last appearance at Lord’s, the home of cricket. It was the best I’d ever bowled, given that my leg was about to fall off, I was jabbed up to the hilt and probably a little bit high. So it was all about me. I just wanted to smell the roses one last time and carry that smell with me for ever.

  After the series was over, and we’d regained the Ashes, I had another micro-fracture operation, this time on my knee. I said to my surgeon, Andy Williams, a great fella from Bristol, ‘I want to be awake, so you can tell me what’s happening.’

  He said, ‘You do not want to be awake for this. My dad’s a builder, I do the same job with different tools. I’m gonna get you in positions you do not want to see and make noises you do not want to hear.’

  That swung it for me. The first part of the surgery involved tidying up my cartilage, but Andy warned me that if he found any bone damage, I was in trouble. He also told me that it was a 1-in-10,000 chance, but when I woke up, I looked at his face and said, ‘I’ve got bone damage, haven’t I?’

  To which he replied, ‘Yes.’

  Whenever I’d done rehab before with Rooster, who practically lived with us, there had been light at the end of the tunnel. I’d rebuilt myself so many times that he probably got three or four years out of me I shouldn’t have had. Whenever I’d been written off and told I couldn’t do something, I’d told them to fuck off, through my actions at least. That was the worst thing you could possibly say to me, because whatever it was, I’d prove you wrong. I loved rebuilding myself that much. Even this time I gave it a go, despite the advice of my surgeon. But I soon had to admit I was beaten. In a hotel in Glasgow, over eggs Benedict, a specialist told me I was spent and would have to do something else. That was a bitter pill to swallow. It felt like I’d beaten myself. Having to retire was harder to take than any whitewash at the hands of Australia.

  * * *

  The BBC documentary about depression in sport was me and my management’s idea. I wanted to do it because I had teammates who’d struggled with it. Marcus Trescothick had returned home early from India in 2006, and later wrote with honesty and dignity about his mental illness. Steve Harmison had suffered for years in silence. I roomed with Harmy for years, spent days sitting on his bed watching The Royle Family or Only Fools and Horses. He even had every episode of Lovejoy, which I drew the line at. But I also saw him at his lowest, when he literally couldn’t get off the floor. People just thought he was lazy, but the problem went far deeper. It was frustrating for me, because we were like brothers. I knew what he was going through, but I had to bite my tongue. So now I wanted to highlight what Harmy had been through, let him reveal his struggle, so that maybe it would make it easier for other people to speak about it.

  This was about a year after I retired, when I was still wrestling with no longer being a cricketer, and the programme was almost like having therapy. I chatted to Ricky Hatton, who I love. Our careers hit the heights at the same time – just before the 2005 Ashes, he won the light-welterweight world title at the MEN Arena – and we used to bump into each other all over Manchester, drink to excess, sing karaoke together in the Press Club on Deansgate. And as I was listening to him speak, I was thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, this is what I have. He’s talking about me.’

  And when I listened to Harmy speak I thought the same. I also listened to Celtic legend Neil Lennon – the same; former snooke
r world champion Graeme Dott, who spoke movingly about breaking down during a match and crying behind his hanky – the same. Everyone I spoke to, I could take pieces of their experiences and match them to mine. Making that programme was like a voyage of discovery.

  I also went to America to interview Piers Morgan. He gave the press point of view, which wasn’t necessarily his, and which sounded a bit harsh. But when they trailed the programme they took his quote out of context, so that it sounded like Piers was being insensitive. He wasn’t, he was just explaining why the press are like they are, but he got hammered on social media. I felt a bit bad about that, because I like Piers and he’d done me a favour. While I was out there, he put me on to Vinnie Jones. I’d never met him, but when I phoned him up he said, ‘All right, Freddie, course I know you, come over…’ His place was on Mulholland Drive, which overlooks Hollywood. We went up there and were driving around, looking for his house, and suddenly we saw this great big Union Jack up a flag pole. We took a wild guess that it was Vinnie’s gaff.

  He was the perfect host, made brews for the crew as we were setting up in his kitchen. But when we did the interview, and he was telling me about the time he thought about shooting himself and his dog talked him out of it (it makes sense when you hear the full story), we had to keep stopping, because guests were arriving for a poker night and kept walking into shot.

  Michael Greco was there, who played Beppe di Marco in EastEnders, 1980’s football managers, American celebrities, and this lad called Keiran Lee, who’s originally from Derby, is the highest-earning male porn star in America and owns a penis that is insured with Lloyd’s of London for $1m. I had to say to Vinnie, ‘Sorry, mate, can we stop these people walking through? We can’t have porn stars wandering past, this is a documentary about depression.’