Cricket can sometimes be a killer of a game (2011)
........David Frith, the knowledgeable and prolific cricket writer, has written several books on the high incidence of cricket players committing suicide. His first book on the topic covered 80 cricket suicides. In later books he covered 150 suicides, and he says he is coming across new cases all the time.
Frith’s conclusion is this: “Cricket, because it is so monopolistic, because it swallows you up before spitting you out, because it enfolds you and plays on the mind, filling you with confusion and self-doubt, is by far the major sport for suicides.”
This argument that the nature of cricket itself is somehow involved with the suicide rate of cricketers is keenly disputed.
Peter Roebuck and Mike Brearley insist that the game of cricket itself is not to blame.“It is not cricket,’ Brearley says, “which causes suicides: people kill themselves for reasons that are internal to themselves and their histories.”
But Frith, who is the undoubted expert on this disturbing aspect of the sport, makes the point that cricket is a one-chance game that tears at the nerves of players who may be susceptible to these pressures: “Golfers, footballers, tennis players and boxers all have an assurance that they have a chance to recover from an early defeat in the game but cricket embodies uncertainty on the grand scale and on a relentless daily basis.”
I believe that there is something in this.
Anyone who has played cricket knows how stunning is the finality of a dismissal or a dropped catch. One minute you are out there batting, then you are walking back to the pavilion. If only you could have faced that ball again.
Suicide in cricket - a hidden phenomena | The Roar