Marcus Trescothick - Coming Back To Me - The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick

Their interest suitably aroused, and Bristol being within their boundaries, Gloucestershire County Cricket Club then picked me to play for their Under-11s, and when I made a century for them in my second match, against Somerset at Frenchay CC, Somerset made enquiries, realized I was eligible to play for them because Keynsham was in their territory, and my Gloucestershire career was over. From now on I would be playing for Somerset, my dad’s county, my county.

The other thing that happened? A school trip to Torquay.

All kids get homesick, of course. But this was different. This was more or less unbearable. It was our last year at St Anne’s and they decided to take us all to Torquay for a week together before we all moved on to our senior schools. It was the first time I had been away from home in my life and I hated it. I just hated it. I cried and cried and cried. Even though I was with all my mates, and we couldn’t have been more than 100 miles or a couple of hours’ drive from Oldland Common, I just couldn’t bear being away from home. I wasn’t a bit sad, or down in the dumps. I was terrified, irrationally so, and that scared me even more. Away from mum and dad and my home and my sister and my cats and my stuff and outside of my place, all I felt was dreadful, but the moment I got home I was fine again, as if it had never happened. I told my folks I hadn’t enjoyed the trip much but I didn’t tell them any more. Photos of the trip showed me joining in and smiling and it can’t have been all bad. But there were moments when it was, and, from then on, I never felt really comfortable being away from my home, family, friends and the familiar again. Not long afterwards, I travelled to Cheltenham College for a county coaching clinic, felt terrible the moment I arrived, made up some story about not being well and asked mum to come and collect me the same day. Cheltenham? About 45 minutes from home.

Those feelings stayed within me, on and off, throughout a 15-year career in county and international cricket. For long periods they would disappear or lie dormant, and initially, even when they came, they were completely manageable. Playing top-level cricket gave me such a buzz that I could force them to one side. As time progressed, however, and the exhausting effects of burnout weakened my resilience, the feelings grew stronger and stronger.

Years later, when I discussed the history of my illness with my counsellor that week in Torquay took on great significance.

For now, however, the only thing on my agenda was sport, and plenty of it, as from September 1987 I joined the Sir Bernard Lovell Comprehensive School, also in Oldland Common. It probably didn’t take long for the teachers and staff to work out that they weren’t going to win any industry prizes for their work with me. An early indication of the kind of impact I would have in the classroom can be judged by the two credit notes I received in my first term, the first for ‘Full marks in the beautiful babies competition’, whatever that was, the next for ‘Effort in gathering a most interesting collection of personal items for display in class’. By 1988 I had graduated to ‘For giving freely of your time and interest to make the New Intake Parents’ Evening a success’ and ‘Doing a week of litter duty’. My year grades were okay, not outstanding, but okay. I didn’t get into much trouble, if any. I wasn’t disruptive. I just wasn’t interested. The only subject with which I had more than a passing acquaintance was drama. I was brilliant as one of the T-birds in Grease , singing ‘ We’ll get some overhead filters and some four barrel quads, oh yeah – Grease lightning, wo-oh grease lightning’ etc ., though I quite fancied having a go at John Travolta’s part, as it happens. And I was growing more and more confident that cricket would not only be my passion, it would also be my profession. So much so that when someone at school recommended I spend more time on my truly appalling French, I replied: ‘The only places I’m going to go are Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe and West Indies. If I start speaking French in any of those places they won’t have a clue what I’m on about.’

The only thing I wanted to learn about was cricket, and not just the playing. Even at this age I was a kit bully. Unwrapping a new pair of pads or gloves, or running my hand down the blade of a new bat, was pure ecstasy for me. And, looking back, the amount of time I spent getting my gear in order and just right was downright scary. My obsession with bats and handles and grips and the like was, well, an obsession.

The runs just kept on coming, though. Still bigger than most of the other lads, still able to smash the ball harder and farther than anyone else, and still loving that feeling, I was still piling on the scores and keeping pretty well when required, for my school, for Avon Schools, for Somerset and for West of England and I was selected as one of the top 24 in the country in my age group for a national coaching course at Lilleshall. I made my first century in senior cricket, for Keynsham in the Western League in 1989, aged 14 and in 1990, after an England Schools Cricket Association trials tournament in Oxford, when England named their first-ever Under-14 squad, selected by David Lloyd among others, I was in it, alongside Andrew Flintoff and Paul Collingwood. Fred was a big boisterous bloke who could launch it miles. Colly, at that stage was an irritating dobber who bowled gentle inswing to left-handers and I whacked the living c**p out of him. If you had said to us then that, in 15 years’ time, we would be standing at The Oval drenching ourselves in Ashes champagne…

David Lloyd was impressed by my batting, less so by my size and shape, which by now was on the portly side of chubby. Unsurprising really, as my diet comprised all and only the wrong things; sausages were my favourite, hence the nickname ‘Banger’, later coined by Bob Cottam at Somerset, that has stuck with me ever since. Then, in no particular order, sausages, chips, sausages, toast, sausages, baked beans, sausages, cheese, sausages, eggs, sausages and the occasional sausage thrown in, topped off with a sprinkling of sausage. The only muscles I had in my body were around my mouth. If someone put a slice of cucumber in front of me, or any other salad item for that matter, and said ‘eat that and I’ll give you £100’, I’d say no chance. Fruit? Forget it. Vegetables? Why?

Christmas dinner in our house was a bit strange, to say the least. While everyone else would be tucking into traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings, my festive fare consisted of tinned carrots (I didn’t like the fresh ones, obviously) and a variety of potatoes, roast, boiled and mashed, which I’d stuff between slices of bread to make spud sarnies.

I cannot eat enough steak these days, but then I couldn’t stand the taste and texture of meat at all. When mum used to try and feed me meat of any kind as a toddler I would just retch or spit it out. I didn’t eat chicken until I was 20, when my Somerset teammate Rob Turner persuaded me to try a McDonald’s chicken-burger. I was so proud I rang my mum and told her, as I was washing it down with a million cans of fizzy-pop. I ate my first beef burger when I was 29. No, really. I’m not kidding.

Lloyd did mention to someone that perhaps the subject of my weight and general fitness might have to be addressed and I know it later cost me a place on the West of England Schools tour to the West Indies and possibly a place on the following year’s England Under-15 squad, but, at 14, the fact that I could hit the ball harder than seemingly anyone else my age in the entire country covered a multitude of sins. I might not have been the sprightliest in the field or between the wickets, but when you stood behind the stumps with the gloves on, and hit the ball like I did, what did I need to run for? Dad did try and take me out jogging a few times but I could barely make it to the end of our road and he soon gave it up as a bad job.