Bound by adversity, Gloucestershire's unique dressing room pushing for Finals Day berth

NICK FRIEND: For Tom Smith, Gareth Roderick and Benny Howell, qualification for T20 Blast Finals Day would come with an additional sense of significance: all three have been indebted to the Professional Cricketers' Trust in recent years

“I know as a widower that the care and support I’ve had from teammates and the wider cricketing world has been immense,” Gloucestershire's Tom Smith says, speaking candidly during a poignant Zoom call.

“I think our dressing room is quite unique compared to most dressing rooms. Obviously, you’ve got Gareth’s father, my wife, Ian Harvey – the assistant coach – his wife died, Michael Klinger’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, so with all in that one changing room there has been a lot of very tough experiences. Actually, Richard Dawson has had to deal with a lot in his time as coach.

“As a group of players, everyone is extremely emotionally intelligent – they’ve gone through stuff, they’ve supported all of us. We’re one big family and to survive all of that as a group of players – generally most of us have been there the whole time throughout all of those scenarios – it’s a very loving environment.”

What they have gone through as individuals has forged an exceptional collective.

On Saturday, T20 Blast Finals Day will collaborate with the Professional Cricketers’ Trust, supporting the players’ charity as it looks to make up for losses of £250,000 in a year that has seen fundraising efforts restricted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Before they can confirm their own place at Edgbaston, Gloucestershire will face Northamptonshire in a home quarter-final on Thursday, desperate for a change in knockout fortunes; they last won the competition in 2007, but have made it out of their group in four of the last five years.

For Smith, Gareth Roderick and Benny Howell, however, qualification would come with an additional sense of significance: all three have been indebted to the organisation in recent years.

And at the end of a summer that has encouraged reflection through the challenges that have developed in light of an exceptional set of circumstances, they know only too well the value of its work.

“They’ve been by my side like a family member, really, helping support me,” Smith explains. He lost his wife, Laura, in 2018.

“After Laura died, in these last two years, I couldn’t have played cricket without their support, financially and the mental support I’ve received. It’s been quite a journey and it wouldn’t have been possible without their support.”

^{No one has taken more T20 Blast wickets than Tom Smith this year}

Roderick, Durban-born but a county stalwart since 2013, is in his final week as a Gloucestershire player, before he moves on to Worcestershire at the end of the season. A former club captain at Bristol, he lost his father to suicide in 2017, before receiving help to cope with the mental challenges that followed his family tragedy.

He and his now-wife had recently bought their first house, while his own cricketing career had been on an upward curve until he was hit with the bombshell news from his family on the other side of the world in South Africa.

“I went super-insular and shut myself down from my partner,” he recalls. “I wasn't speaking about anything and it took me two or three months to come out the other side and go: ‘Actually, I need a bit of help here.’

“The next day I was then seeing someone and talking through it. I don't think I would have ever asked for help like that if that help wasn't so readily available to me.

“Through the Trust, my personality and how I deal with those things now has completely changed – as someone who never used to share my emotion or tell anyone how I was feeling to being open and honest with myself, my partner and my team-mates.

“That change in my personality has come from the Trust, I don't think I would still be playing cricket now if I didn't have that kind of support because I would have come crashing down at some stage.”

Perhaps, it is where this openness comes from. Over the course of half an hour, they speak with a combination of wisdom and emotion about how their experiences and subsequent support has shaped the cricketers they have since become.

Roderick and Smith have often shared car journeys to winter training sessions, opening up to one another. “I always joke that it's 45 minutes of therapy for me and I'm sure he's tired of hearing all of my thoughts,” Roderick smiles.

^{Gareth Roderick will join Worcestershire at the end of the season}

Further afield, the work done by the Ruth Strauss Foundation and the McGrath Foundation has kept the subject in the public domain.

The charities were set up in honour and memory of Ruth Strauss, late wife of former England captain Andrew, and Jane McGrath, who passed away in 2008 and was wife to Australian great Glenn McGrath.

“There is a lot more social media around, a lot more videos, a lot more awareness,” Smith adds. “There’s so much around bereavement that it’s normalising grief now, and I think people are a lot better at discussing it and having conversations.”

For Howell, who has ADHD, the last year has been a struggle. Until he made his T20 Blast return against Somerset in mid-September, it had been 13 months since he had last been fit to turn out for his county, having suffered a hamstring injury in the final weeks of the 2019 campaign.

That blow, combined with the effects of lockdown, which added further constraints to his lifestyle, proved a challenge.

“I found it incredibly difficult because I rely a lot on moving around and keeping active,” he explains. “A lot of that clears my head, so not being able to play cricket and run about as much as I could was tough.

“Even on my days off I like moving, so when my hamstring was really sore initially and I couldn't move so I had to rest, that was quite tough, not just physically but mentally trying to deal with that and try to figure other ways of keeping my mind busy.

“I'm a bit obsessed when it comes to cricket and training and improving so not being able to do that was a challenge.”

His relationship with the Trust has its roots in initially coming to understand his diagnosis. He had previously been prescribed anti-depressants, having linked his issues to depression.

“To be able to get help from the Trust in terms of knowing exactly what was going on helped me figure out what I had,” he says. “ADHD is a bit of an unknown to a lot of people but it helped me figure out how my mind works and how I can figure out how to navigate through the chaotic mind that I have.”

^{Benny Howell recently made his return after 13 months out through injury}

And while all three players have their own separate stories to tell, they are bound by their adversity and the way in which they have spoken openly about their different traumas.

Smith points to the challenges of life as a single parent through lockdown. “The thought of not getting any cricket and being in lockdown with my girls put me into a very dark place,” he admits. He struggled to fit in his daily allowance of exercise, with the distant dream of a return to normality spurring on “like the countdown to Christmas”.

He has come out the other side of a difficult summer as the Blast’s joint-leading wicket-taker, including a televised five-wicket haul against Birmingham Bears.

Previously, the 33-year-old has spoken of how, for a time after Laura’s passing, he found it difficult to experience real highs. The weeks since cricket’s comeback in August, then, have been pivotal.

“I talk a lot about feeling five out of 10, and not feeling the big highs and lows,” he says. “That’s something that after lockdown I really wanted to address, and wanted to make some changes in my life to feel some more emotion.

“That’s not going to be an overnight thing, that’s going to be a thing that happens over time. One thing I’ve really reflected on is that the Somerset game where I got the winning runs, I certainly felt happiness there. I felt everyone else’s joy – it meant a lot to all of us to get that home quarter-final, and a lot about this is enjoying other people’s happiness as much as mine.

“Throughout the tournament, I’ve had far more sixes and sevens, not necessarily from my own success but being around a team, a group of people pulling in the same direction that want to win.

“It’s been a nice journey. All of it was led from lockdown and the darkness of that to the excitement of having cricket back in my life to having a little bit more normality. It’s been really nice.”

Cricket’s role in opening the door for discussion around mental health in sport has been well-documented, but that makes it no less fundamental. For Roderick, the part played by the Trust in allowing cricketers to speak up has been “immense”.

“The stigma in men's sport about mental health is certainly a lot better than it was,” he adds.

“Watching some of the videos that go out and the experiences that these guys go through when we play and finish playing, just shining a light on that topic makes it easier for people who are struggling to talk about it – they see other guys going through similar journeys as them and it makes it easier for them to step into the light and ask for help and start their own conversation and their own journey.

“It's been a really, really good last few years from that front. Hopefully, the work carries on and continues because we see how many people are struggling in day-to-day lives in professional sport.”

This year’s Vitality Blast Finals Day will be in support of the Professional Cricketers’ Trust, with both funds for – and awareness of – the charity being raised throughout the day. Professional cricket’s leading non-profit offers life-changing assistance to PCA members and their immediate families when they need it most. You can learn more here and you can donate here.

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