After five of the toughest years, a weight was lifted from Tom Fell’s shoulders

NICK FRIEND: Fell scored his fifth first-class hundred as a 21-year-old in September 2015. Since then, the runs have dried up and he has come through a battle with cancer. On Tuesday, the five-year wait for a sixth finally came to an end

In a year without spectators, everything sounds that little bit louder. Each ripple is amplified, piercing through the blanket of silence created by the vast county grounds and their deserted stands.

The only noise comes from those out in the middle and from those watching on from the dugout. And on Tuesday, Worcestershire’s balcony erupted.

Tom Fell waited five years for that moment: the sixth first-class century of his career arriving 1,792 days, 256 weeks and 77 innings after his last. The fifth came as a precocious 21-year-old in September 2015.

It was his third hundred of a fine season in the top tier of the County Championship; Steve Rhodes, head coach at the time, declared: “We have a lot of young players who are only going to get better.” Middlesex, his opposition on that day, would win the title a year later.

For Fell, things would become more complicated. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the end of that campaign and underwent surgery soon afterwards. The following March, he was put through three bouts of chemotherapy after a small area of cancer was detected in his lymph modes. By the end of May 2016, he had received the all-clear to resume his run-scoring and ascent through the game.

Only, that has proven a challenge – the kind that five years ago, those who had witnessed him go about his business would never have believed. He scored 1,127 first-class runs in 2015, averaging 41.74; he was the youngest player in the country to pass the milestone of 1,000 – just another cab off the Worcestershire rank destined for higher honours.

But the runs dried up – until Tuesday. There is only so much that one can garner from a roar, but the bundle of cheers from his teammates told you more than any words could. A more popular hundred you will struggle to find in this abbreviated summer.

“The first thought was just huge relief, really,” Fell tells The Cricketer. “It’s been a long time. Those thoughts are running through your head about whether you’re going to get there again. So, to finally get it was a bit of a weight off my shoulders.

“I think going into the next game, I just feel so much better about where I’m at. That weight is off my shoulders. Now, I can just go into training and games to enjoy it and not think about anything else.”

^{Fell had last reached three figures in first-class cricket on September 22, 2015}

What began as a run of low scores became a rut; weeks became months and months became years. In 2017, Worcestershire won Division Two but his personal form plummeted to a grim nadir. In 23 innings, he averaged 14.68 and didn’t reach fifty on a single occasion.

There were scores of 85 against Sussex in 2016, and efforts of 88 and 89 against Surrey two years later. So close but also so far. It is why Tuesday meant so much, and why everything feels different now. Statistics don’t do nuance; they don’t account for the near misses nor for a 2019 in which he only played six games. No hundreds in five years, it read.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t weigh on my mind,” he reflects. “The longer you go without scoring a hundred, the more it does, and the harder you try to get one. That’s often the worst place you can be, when you’re looking too far ahead and trying too hard.

“It wasn’t something I was overly concerned about for a while, but when you do start to take a look back and think how long it’s been, it’s something I’ve been desperate to do for quite a while. Hopefully, it won’t be five years before the next one.”

He chuckles when he adds that final semi-quip. Understanding that concept was the toughest part of the road he has been down. When you’re 21 years of age and churning out first-class hundreds for fun, you don’t stop for breath to soak in how it all feels. The next one, you’re led to assume, is just around the corner.

That year, just eight men scored more runs in Division One – all but one of them England internationals: James Hildreth, Scott Borthwick, Marcus Trescothick, Luke Wright, Muchael Carberry, Nick Compton, Jonny Bairstow, Mark Stoneman. And then, Fell.

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“When you start out your career, you haven’t got any fear,” he says. “I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but you don’t. You’ve not really experienced failure. You don’t really think or worry about negative things. You’re just there enjoying your cricket.

“For me, I put a couple of bad scores together, started to doubt myself and the bad scores kept coming. Then, your mind gets a bit clustered and it keeps on building and building. The games come thick and fast; before you know it, you’ve gone four or five games without a run. I can’t put a finger on why it happened.”

That quandary troubled him most – the knowledge of his ability and the proof of his past success. In only his second first-class match for the county, he made 62 against the touring Australians. In his third, he was denied a maiden ton when poor weather left him stranded on 94.

“It was so frustrating because I did know what I was capable of,” he explains. “It was a case of trying to remember what that was like. Sometimes, it is difficult and there have been times in the last few years where I have really doubted myself and doubted whether I would get another one. You just have to remember those good times and remember what you are capable of.

🎥Well batted, Tom 👏 pic.twitter.com/03Rbdc3LcW

— Worcestershire CCC (@WorcsCCC) August 18, 2020

“Luckily, I’ve had people who keep reminding me of that at Worcester and have stuck with me and kept giving me opportunities. I guess that shows what they think of me and shows that they know what I’m capable of.

“That was important – to know that you’ve got the backing of the team and the club. But there have been times where I have doubted myself. You still have to try to look back and remember what it was that made you successful and try to replicate it.

“But that is very hard. It is very difficult to think back that long. Often, the only innings you remember is your last innings or the last time you batted. And that’s what you take into the next game.”

He used a psychologist at one point to talk his way through it. Simplicity is key, he learnt, and going back to basics and to the foundations of his initial success.

“That’s probably something I went away from when I was struggling; I was forgetting about those little things that worked in the past. My mind was getting cluttered and you start thinking about too much. I think that’s probably what happened.”

I ask about Fell’s sense of perspective. Is cricket ultimately not just a game? After all, in overcoming his illness, he carries with him a life experience that sets him apart from so many of those around him.

“Everyone talks about that,” he says, “and I feel like I probably should have more perspective, but I’ve found as time has gone on that all of that is behind me.”

He is not avoiding the question; rather, he is teeing himself up for a thoughtful, candid reflection on his own development in the five years since his cancer battle.

“It’s difficult to still have that perspective, certainly now,” he muses. “Now it is just about cricket and the fact that it is my job, at the end of the day. I think the season afterwards, of course, I just felt lucky to be playing again. It was great and I was just enjoying it.

“But I think it’s only natural that you do forget about what you went through and you do start getting worried about your form again. It does just become normal, like with anyone else. Of course, there is a little bit of perspective in there. I try to look back and think that it could be a lot worse, but that can be difficult. You do just naturally start putting pressure on yourself and start worrying about things, like anyone else would.”

^{Fell's hundred set up a fine victory for Worcestershire, who bowled Northants out on the final day at Wantage Road}

He prefers to treat his enforced spell out of the game as “basically like having an injury for six months”, though he is aware that beating cancer as a figure in the public eye comes with an unusual tag.

“It is a little bit strange,” he adds. “I obviously haven’t forgotten about it, but I don’t think about it. But other people do, and they still look at me and think about that whenever my name is mentioned. I just want to be treated like everyone else. I never wanted the sympathy card attached to my name; I just wanted to be like any other cricketer.

“Hopefully, seeing what I went through can help someone else, get themselves checked up and take the positives I took from it. I am aware of it but it’s not something I’ve thought about recently.

“It’s not affected my cricket in any way. I can’t use it as any excuse; I’ve never used it as a reason for why I haven’t done well. It’s just one of those things in sport, where you lose that bit of confidence.

“I’ve never looked for sympathy and never really wanted people to judge me on that. I just want to be looked at as anyone else who’s playing the game and struggling for a bit of form. That’s all it was, really. It was never to do with anything else.”

That thought gives this hundred an added sense of significance. It signifies an opportunity for a fresh start; it feels somewhat ironic to suggest after so long that this was coming, but Fell had begun the Bob Willis Trophy with scores of 32, 36 and 39, before his unbeaten 110 broke a burdensome hoodoo.

At Wantage Road against a Northamptonshire side promoted to Division One at the end of last season, no one else in the match faced more than 102 balls in an innings. Teammate Riki Wessels was the only other player on either side to pass fifty, and his was a counterattacking effort rather than the kind of resolute grind shown by Fell.

Perhaps, though, that was gloriously appropriate – that having waited so long, he would have to grind his way to three figures in a display full of stout-hearted, unflinching spunk. A knock that lasted 208 balls and 339 minutes, all 58 months in the making.

The message now is to enjoy this moment – not in a sense of expansive celebration, but to ensure that these emotions are stored away and neither forgotten nor taken for granted.

^{Fell's hundred was greeted with rapturous applause from his teammates on the balcony}

He returns to what remains of the Middlesex memories: he made 171, while former housemate and close friend Tom Kohler-Cadmore added 130. Worcestershire won by an innings and 128 runs.

“You remember snippets of it and the feeling of getting a hundred,” he recalls, “but it is difficult to think back that long and actually remember what it felt like and how I felt and how I was playing.

“You want to try to remember it and lock those good days and good memories in as much as you can, but it’s not that easy.

“I will keep this one locked in and hopefully it won’t be too long before the next one, so I won’t keep having to look too far back. It’s important to bottle up this feeling and remember what it’s like – use it as motivation to keep working hard. You want to have as many days like that as you can.

“Hopefully, this is the start of the next phase of my career and I can kick on. The last few years that have happened, I can put them to bed, learn from them and work forward with a lot more success. It is like a landmark – a chance to start again, really.”

And after the last five years, Tom Fell deserves that opportunity more than most.

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