BARRY NICHOLLS Second Innings: On men, mental health and cricket. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress
In this poignant memoir Barry Nicholls melds family and personal history with reflections on cricket and mental health.
According to Beyond Blue, men in Australia are known for ‘bottling things up’, which increases the risk of depression or anxiety being untreated – or wrongly treated by self-medication, often booze. Around one in eight men experience depression and one in five experience anxiety at some stage in their lives.
Barry Nicholls begins his story in August 2014:
The light reflects off metal palings as I pull my car into the hospital grounds. The park is close to full. I negotiate wire fences strewn with orange-coloured plastic and settle on a makeshift area near construction work. Men in hard hats with bored gazes try to look busy. Rather than walking down the beach, I’m soon staring at a slightly off-white wall in the new Busselton hospital. That’s me on the red-covered nylon chair. Intent on my mobile phone.
Barry Nicholls is awaiting a consultation with a psychiatrist. His serotonin levels require adjustment. ‘We need to find the sweet spot,’ the psychiatrist says, using a sporting metaphor. Life should be better than this. The author is a top-line ABC broadcaster with a string of successful cricket books behind him and a growing family: ‘I should be happy as can be. I have four healthy beautiful kids, but pleasure remains elusive.’
Nicholls tracks his personal struggle with mental health while delving into the background of his grandparents’ generation, and growing up amid family trauma, marked not only by his parent’s arguments and divorce, but by his eldest brother Steve’s psychosis, which included three suicide attempts.
Cricket and cricket history is something of a safety valve. As a batsman Nicholls wins state selection in junior sides and plays several years of senior level grade cricket. ‘Cricket books,’ he says, ‘awaken me to provide an escape from reality,’ yet he also acknowledges that:
Cricket and anxiety go together like a hand in a glove. Perhaps that’s part of the allure. A game that encourages in small doses and punishes in large measure.
One of the strengths of the narrative is its deliberately loose organisation. While the main focus is the author’s current state of mind, the fact that it is often frayed means understanding is aided by reflection and recognising patterns from the past. Flashbacks are thus frequent and integral to the storytelling, with intentions indicated by way of chapter titles such as ‘Some of life’s complexities: 1940s/1970s’, ‘Vera and Cecil: 2014/1950s–1960s’, ‘Time to act: 2014/1976’ and ‘Deeper into the darkness: 1988/2015’.
Here it’s 2014 (again):
I am starting to feel like a loser … That is the anxiety and depression speaking. It diminishes you as a person. Makes you feel less worthy. Like you don’t belong or deserve to be where you are, while everyone else does. Some days I feel like I don’t deserve to be on this earth.
And there are echoes here from 1976 when he’s in Year Eight, his first year at Pembroke School on a sports scholarship, and his top batting score in the first term is 10. ‘When are you going to score some runs, you loser?’ another kid taunts him, and he feels like he’s ‘caught in a sinking pile of mud’.
Science. Fail.
Maths. Fail.
Life. Fail.
It’s also a time when his mother says, ‘I’m leaving your father,’ and he doesn’t know what to do (or say). Sport offers a defence mechanism, even if only a momentary reprieve: ‘I start thinking about whether I can kick the footy the length of the front lawn.’
‘Are you listening, Barry?’ his mother asks, and he realises he hasn’t absorbed the gravity of what’s been said and starts to cry. He hopes his parents will get back together but they won’t. Nevertheless, it’s the hope that’s important.
When depression is at its worst there often appears no way out. In the prologue to the book Nicholls describes his lowest point as his ‘Greg Chappell moment’ – the Greg Chappell of the summer of 1981–82 when his glorious career was interrupted with seven ducks in 15 international matches, including a stretch of four in a row. Chappell found a way out and came back.
Nicholls’s worst time is 2015 and is so bad that he comes close to suicide. Fortunately, he takes time to reflect on a conversation with his psychiatrist:
‘How dark have these thoughts become?’
When I tell him how dark, he said, ‘There’s no coming back, Barry. You must realise that. There is no coming back, Barry.’
He placed an emphasis on my name each time he said it. He looked at me and talked slowly. ‘It would also cause devastation for your family for the rest of their lives.’
Nicholls is also fortunate that his GP and his psychiatrist continue to look out for him. As he writes: ‘Two great doctors helped guide me to the light, and the overriding emotion is one of gratitude.’
Make no mistake, Second Innings is a frank and fearless book deserving a wide readership, particularly by men and the families of men suffering with depression and anxiety.
Barry Nicholls Second Innings: On men, mental health and cricket Fremantle Press 2021 PB 192pp $24.95
Bernard Whimpress usually writes on sport and his most recent book is George Giffen: A Biography (2020).
You can buy Second Innings from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.
If you’d like to help keep the Newtown Review of Books a free and independent site for book reviews, please consider making a donation. Your support is greatly appreciated.
