I have spoken before about the mental challenges in sport when faced with a trial.
My Middlesex trials - over six weeks, came in 1990 for the YC's (Young Cricketers) and served as something as a wake up call in not only standard, but also coaching.
Luckily my mother kept a scrapbook, and my trial letter arrived (no emails back then) to commence at the Middlesex Academy was to be a thorough examination.
Ian Gould (now an international umpire) and former Sussex and England wicketkeeper was in charge of my net. He was bowling some gentle outswingers and I'd hit a couple of nice shots, so my punishment was to be moved to the fast bowlers net where I was facing Ricky Fay (who took over 100 first-class wickets) zinging it around my head.
Indoors, all bowlers, fast ones anyway, bowl well over the line, so as a batter you are facing this from 18 yards instead of 22. I spent the whole time ducking.
Keith Dutch, a spinner for Middlesex and Somerset - who I had played a cup game against at John Lyon school, actually gave me a mouthful for not handing back his ball from the opposite net. I'd rather have faced him.
Hertfordshire trials came too, although the standard wasn't quite as good as the pace was certainly a couple of clicks down, but I'd gone primarily as a spinner, to my relief.
I think by the Herts trials stage, the pressure and examination of my technique as a batter had got to me and I wasn't enjoying the game. Cricket is a very taxing game mentally, and it's why so many players at international and club level struggle with depression and anxiety.
It's a game far removed from football, where in a team, there's always someone to bail you out, help and offer a bit of cover. In cricket, you're out on your own in the middle. Batting against 11 others in the face of constant sledging becomes a drain. The bowling part went quite well, but a spinner indoors when faced with a 'skidder' cannot be judged on his ability to turn it - as it doesn't turn indoor. And I was quite a big spinner of the ball.
It didn't help I was a superstitious player, and I'd become trapped by my own methods when batting, of having to tap the bat down three times, look up, down and then up, before looking to the offside and counting to three. It had got out of hand at one stage.
I always had to put my left pad on first, and a recurring dream I have to this day is not being able to find any of my kit as I am about to go out to the crease. In the dream, the kit gradually decreases to the point where I have nothing left.
I felt a little let down by the Middlesex experience as it was my club, and one of my favourite players as a kid was Wilf Slack (pictured at Finchley CC).
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