Book Review: ‘The Hard Yards - Highs and Lows of a Life in Cricket’: Published by ‘Pitch Publishing’
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The word extraordinary keeps rearing its head as you read this exceptional book. There are so many levels to it, so many inner depths, that it’s not just about a man with depression simply surviving from day to day but a man who somehow is able to keep a professional cricket career alive while all his real battles and struggles wage inside him. Not only is Michael Yardy an extraordinary individual who has had the strength and inner resolve to battle such demons and survive but somehow managed to score over 10,000 1st class runs as well as be only one of 11 Englishmen to hold a T20 World Cup Medal plus win an array of County Cricket trophies for Sussex to boot. How the hell did he lift up a bat and ball let alone achieve the rest?
The first three chapters are a shock to the system. This is not some Grizzly, Yards, Kirts, Mushy and Muzza famous five on a jolly jape adventure to winning silverware but the start of a horror movie where a man you’ve watched, applauded, shared success with, even revered, collapses into an abyss of mental torment. The reader is instantly challenged. This book is not for the faint-hearted. The honesty of Yardy is extraordinary.
He may feel he is on a mission to remove the taboo of depression, originally begun by Marcus Trescothick, then followed by Graeme Fowler, but Yardy’s candour is both brutal, brave, bold and even daring.
“Depression was stalking me. Being diagnosed had drained me of all my confidence as a player. And I never got it back”
While his depressive episodes began in 2008, the book opens at the 50 overs World Cup tournament in Sri Lanka. It is March 2011. England have reached the QFs and based in Colombo. Yardy looks and feels terrible. He describes one of his many disturbed moments, “I remember standing in front of the mirror in my hotel room wishing I could pull my own face off and be someone else. I didn’t want to be Mike Yardy anymore.” A repeated visit to Coach Andy Flower, an understanding nod, and Yardy was smuggled on to the next plane back to England only to be greeted with media intrusion and barbed insensitive comments from Geoffrey Boycott.
These opening chapters are littered with mental upsets from further knocking down Flower’s door and bursting into tears to paranoid episodes in Australia when Yardy convinced himself the house his family were staying in would be broken into. As he explains, “It got so bad that I would wait for Karin and the kids to fall asleep before undertaking my own lengthy nightly security check, which involved making sure every window was locked and ramming chairs and tables against bolted doors, like I was barricading myself in for a shoot-out in a Wild West saloon.”
And to be faced with a jeering Kent crowd at Canterbury during a T20 match repeatedly shouting, “Does your shrink know you’re here?” His inner strength is remarkable. This is a book about depression and how to cope and survive it seen through the eyes of cricket where anxiety, self-doubt and feelings of inferiority are regular occurrences.
Pics from the Book
Thankfully, there are shafts of light within the book amidst this early blackness which shine through via the lesser but as important detail.
His friendship with two excellent other young cricketers during his adolescence when living in Battle and playing for a Hastings CC. His disgust at them not turning up for cricket practice because they were rehearsing in a rock band only to discover later their group became known as
Keane.
His regular mentions of money which include the shenanigans over an agreed Sussex annual contract in 2001 worth £8,500 which was then dismissed by the brash Aussie and then General Manager, Dave ‘lizard’ Gilbert, who tore into Yardy, reducing him to tears, and dropped the sum to £6,000. No surprise, when his wages were raised to £15,000 two years later, the Sussex batsman was chuffed.
Yardy admits he’d never fully felt part of the 2003 winning team due to his various 12th man duties. One vivid memory when Sussex won the Championship Trophy after a 164 year wait, was of seeing the hero of the season, Mushtaq Ahmed, leave almost immediately afterwards with his family in a rented ‘People Carrier’, because his Muslim faith precluded him from joining in with the celebrations. Yardy then describes a winter job he had working in a sports shop in Gatwick Airport a few months later, raising some extra cash to keep the wolf from the door.
Even more extraordinary, in the first match of the 2005 season, when playing against Surrey at ‘The Oval’, Yardy scored 111, but didn’t have sufficient funds to dine out in London afterwards to celebrate. He says, “I was still absolutely skint.”
Enjoying his club retirement with Matt Prior and Luke Wright at the 2015 'Players Awards Night'
There are some excellent quotes from Yardy throughout the book where he isn’t afraid to swear like a trooper including: “I had grown up thinking Sussex were cr*p because they never seemed to win anything.” And, perhaps, his most famous line - during the 2006 C&G Final at Lords where Lancashire had bowled Sussex out for 172, and pumped up after scoring 37 runs off 96 balls to hold up one end and keep the team in the match - he shouted to all and asunder in the dressing room during the interval. “They’re taking the f*cking p*ss out of us. They’re taking the f*cking p*ss!”
Yet, the real tragedy of Yardy’s story, leaving aside his mental anguish, is that given all his success, all the trophies, all the accolades, he never truly enjoyed them. He has just one cricketing memento at home, a picture of the T20 World Cup winning team from 2010. Nothing else.
The only cricket memento in his house
Throughout the book, he blames this lack of enthusiasm on his mental state. “Depression was stalking me. Being diagnosed had drained me of all my confidence as a player. And I never got it back.” During his last season in 2015, when going out to bat in a friendly against Leeds/Bradford MCCU, Yardy remembers thinking to himself, “I f*cking hate this. I’d rather be doing something else - anything else in fact.”
This self-loathing and repugnance of his mental state he blames on cricket. ”I had a great career but I’m pleased it’s over. I really won’t miss playing the sport at all.”
His one true period of joy was the 2009 season where as captain, Sussex won two trophies and money was flowing into his bank account. Yardy says, “I felt more fulfilled than any other of my 16 years as a professional. I was infused with self-belief and confidence.” Not even winning the T20 World Cup some months later matched this feeling as it later triggered another breakdown.
And yes, there is so much more. Yardy’s reflection on those two infamous Sussex match-fixing games; the wonderful batting performances at the end of his career; insights into other county matches; the times playing for England; more observations into his depression including bouts of insomnia, OCD behaviour, further paranoia and physical shaking and sweating; which leads to a remarkable last chapter from his wife Karin, who discusses her husband’s mental state from her perspective, with a similar honesty, that offers a further dimension to the book.
“To see Mike suffer as he has done has just been so heart-breaking…"
The great news is since his decision to retire from cricket, Yardy’s overall health and demeanour has improved. He has not seen a therapist since June 2015. Karin says, “We carry on taking each day as it comes, thankful that the bad days are now fewer and farther between than they were in the past. I hope so, because to see Mike suffer as he has done has just been so heart-breaking for me as his wife.”
Meanwhile, Yardy has much to look forward to in his brave new world. Coaching the Sussex U17s as well as young cricketers at Hurstpierpoint College and Middleton CC alongside a future potential sports psychology job.
The Hard Yards is a must purchase. It is unique, in your face, and challenging. A voyeuristic glimpse of a man on the edge. And kudos to author Bruce Talbot for tackling such a difficult subject so well. He is brave to open the book with three chapters that immediately confront the reader and while some may feel unease and discomfort absorbing some of the passages, there is enough about England and Sussex CCC to make it an enjoyable and rewarding cricket read.
But above all, kudos to Michael Yardy. What an extraordinary last eight years. A battler to the last, not many could have survived such trials and tribulations and come out the other side with a stack of sports trophies and a cricketing record most can only dream of. Not only is Yardy an inspiration to fellow depression sufferers but he offers them hope and light at the end of, what can be, an unforgiving and tortuous tunnel.
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Mike Yardy is carrying out a book signing on Saturday at 1pm in ‘The Boundary Rooms’ during the 1st day of the home Championship match against Derbyshire.
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