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Opinion
I could win the understatement of the year award when I say the past 18 months have been seriously tough, not only in Australia but around the world.
The mental pressure all have been put under, has obviously ranged from annoyance through to quite extreme, but what’s been most obvious is the massive numbers of people being mentally stressed and stressed for long periods of time.
Sports people are no different, of course. They’ve had to endure similar conditions to many and it’s been interesting to see how they’ve coped.
Teams like the Melbourne Storm and the New Zealand Warriors in the NRL have spent most of the past two years away from either their home state or country, being based in a variety of locations in eastern Australia.
That they and other teams in the NRL have been able to produce two seasons of quality football speaks volumes for the organisation that has adapted to this changing environment and the players for showing terrific resilience. Given how the AFL panned out, the same could be said for those involved in that competition as well.
Where I’m having a problem is the goings-on with the cricket at present.
(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Over the past 18 months, I’ve lost count of the number of articles telling me just how tough it is to spend time in a bio-security bubble. If the stories are to be believed, this should be included as another stage in Dante’s vision of hell.
What’s interesting is these stories almost all seem to come from the men.
I’ve read several stories from women cricketers who acknowledge time spent in a bio-bubble is not the easiest, but then go on to talk about all the positives they gained while being quarantined. Which brings me to the title of this piece.
Nasser Hussain made some comments that resonated with me – for all the wrong reasons.
“I’m quite proud of the way in which England’s Test team have kept the show on the road in difficult circumstances, moving in and out of bubbles and spending time away from their families.
“It’s draining. Mental health has suffered… Unless you’ve spent time in a bubble… you don’t get to lecture other people on how they should behave.
“It’s a delicate balancing act for (England captain Joe) Root and Ashley Giles, the director of cricket. They need to be considerate about the players’ mental health as they prepare to enter yet another bubble on one of the toughest tours of all.”
I’d have had real sympathy for these words 12 months ago. I might have had similar feelings even six months ago, but nowadays, they simply don’t work.
There’s no doubt England have bent over backwards to accommodate their players, to the point where not one of them has played in every Test in the past 18 matches. Some have missed games through injuries while others, like Moeen Ali and Jos Buttler, played a game or two then missed the rest of a tour.
Hussain’s suggestion that spending two weeks in quarantine prior to the Ashes will somehow cause some sort of mental deterioration is nonsensical.
Players have been doing this for 18 months, so if they can’t cope with this now, perhaps they don’t have what it takes to play Test cricket.
(Julian Finney/Getty Images)
There’s no doubt being away from family is tough. I spent a fair part of my working life ‘out bush’, often for weeks on end, when the only contact to anyone was a patchy phone line.
I have dozens of friends who worked or are still working not only away from family, but outside Australia, yet they still manage to cope with the pressures, mostly because they have to.
I also know since all the restrictions started, I’ve learnt to cope and adapt, but it seems that many cricketers have not. Bio-secure bubbles are not something new, so they should have learnt coping skills to manage. If they haven’t, why haven’t we heard more about it?
Some of our male cricketers are also very selective in when they want to go into bubbles, such as for lucrative tournaments and when they choose to play the mental health card, at which point cricket boards appear willing to cave in to their demands.
This appears to be what’s happening at present, with the fate of the Ashes unclear. It’s also an issue for us, with some of those Australian players who chose not to go to the West Indies and Bangladesh earlier this year.
Players like Ben Stokes, who have genuine mental health issues, deserve respect and time to manage their issues. For the rest, it might be time to stick their heads outside the bubbles they’re living in and look at how the rest of the world is managing. Yes it’s tough but suck it up and get on with it.
If they can’t do that, perhaps they need to speak with their female Test counterparts. The women seemed to have managed tough times very well, certainly better than the boys.
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