About the time Australian players were furtively sandpapering a ball at Newlands four years ago, South African professional cricketers were completing an online survey to assess which of them had symptoms of anxiety and depression.
The events aren’t connected, but separately they point to what had been clear since 2000, when Hansie Cronje admitted to cheating: psychological and financial pressures are just as much a part of modern cricket as stumps and bails are.
The extent of the mental strain emerges from results of the 2018 pre-season survey, which was published in October this year in the journal Research in Sports Medicine: of the 177 male cricketers who took part in the research, 59% had symptoms of anxiety and depression, a higher percentage than in any previous study among sporting professionals that used the same assessment tool.
It’s an intriguing finding, which is likely to ensure that when you see our cricketers taking the field against Australia in Melbourne on Boxing Day, you will see their efforts in an entirely new light.
It’s worth digging into that research. In a sport in which a player’s every move is measured and reduced to statistics, and which involves different formats, lots of time away from home and lengthy periods alone, the reasons for the symptoms are not necessarily obvious.
University of Cape Town sports scientist Prof Sharief Hendricks, who led the study, found that the highest risk factors in a group that included 13 Proteas players had relatively little to do with on-field pressures. Instead, the players who were most at risk were those who were in a division 1 team, those with a short-term contract and those who failed to use the off-season “productively”.
Hendricks says the meaning of this term was left open to each player who responded to interpret.
Three groups of players were 70% less likely to develop symptoms of anxiety and depression: those who took a break from the game in the off-season, those with two-year contracts and those who played at a lower level.
Two-year contracts seem to hit the sweet spot, Hendricks speculates. They neutralise the instability of a one-year deal but do not lock players in to the extent that they could miss out on other opportunities, such as playing in the Twenty20 (T20) tournaments that have proliferated around the world.
Cricketers who play overseas during the off-season “forfeit the benefits of decompressing, detaching and preparing for the upcoming season”, according to the paper. They often end up playing three seasons: two at home and one overseas, without any significant periods to rest or recover.
“Furthermore, while playing overseas, cricketers may not have access to their normal social support mechanisms”, which has a further negative effect on their mental health.
Hendricks’s research was commissioned by the South African Cricketers’ Association (Saca), which wanted a better understanding of mental health risk factors among its members so it could improve the personal development, education and support programme it has run since 2009, dubbed Player Plus.
Saca’s player services manager, JP van Wyk, says the results — which were known for several years before they were published — informed adjustments to the programme in areas such as risk awareness and referrals to specialists.
There is no evidence to show how the symptoms of anxiety or depression have changed since 2018, Van Wyk says. “However, there are additional factors that one could argue have worsened the situation: the turmoil in South African cricket over the past five years, and Covid. These two factors have affected contract security and the financial viability of cricket in the country.”
As for the growth of T20 leagues, Van Wyk says the finding that the lack of an off-season worsened symptoms, meant it is “likely that T20 players, moving from league to league, would have higher stress than average”.
These players, he says, would typically have lower long-term job security, though the financial gain may offset this to some extent.
“[That makes] the productive use of player down-time even more important — it is hoped, and encouraged, for players to pursue a dual career plan,” he says.
Such a career plan would not only keep players productively occupied, but would help them create their own long-term job security and built their interests outside cricket for when their playing days are done.
Van Wyk says Saca wants to see greater contract security and compliance, improved professional support structures in provinces and “standardised personal development and advocacy support services across the T20 landscape”.
This has been something of a focus for the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations.
You can understand where this all comes from: playing in front of a crowd of 90,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and being desperate to perform at your best against a team equally desperate to ensure you don’t, is a high-octane environment.
Hendricks, who is president of the South African Sports Medicine Association, says symptoms of anxiety and depression “may be a natural, and even healthy, response to elite sport career-related stresses”.
Van Wyk, who has 242 professional male players on his books, will be keenly aware that this can quickly spiral, however. “The reality for Saca is that we are dealing with a subset of South African society that is a higher-risk group than average and needs to be supported accordingly.”
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