Book description
Cricket has an alarming suicide rate.
Among international players for England and several other countries
it is far above the national average for all sports: and there have
been numerous instances at other levels of the game.
For thirty years, celebrated cricket author David Frith has
collected data on this sad subject. Silence of the Heart is his
compelling account of over a hundred cricketers - involving top names
from the past hundred years - who have taken their own lives, with an
explanation of factors that led to their premature deaths.
Can the shocking rate of self-destruction among cricketers be
reduced? Can those who run the game do something to save its
participants from this dreadful fate? These are among the questions
addressed within this catalogue of biographies. But the key question
is whether cricket itself is to blame for its losses - or is that this
summer game attracts people of a melancholic and over-sensitive
nature?
Stoddart, Shrewsbury, Gimblett, Bairstow, Trott, Iverson,
Robertson-Glasgow, Barnes . . . There remains a sense of disbelief
that these high-profile cricketers killed themselves. And many more
cases are examined in this extraordinary book, which comes crammed
with detail, is not devoid of humour, and must rank among the most
intricately researched volumes in cricket's extensive library.
With a foreword by former England captain Mike Brearley, now a
psychotherapist, Silence of the Heart is a startling
investigative narrative covering the phenomenon of cricket's unduly
high level of suicide.
David Frith has been playing, watching and writing about the sport
for fifty years. He was the founding editor of
Wisden Cricket Monthly
and has been editor of
The Cricketer
. Two of his previous books,
Pageant of Cricket
and a biography of A. E. Stoddart,
'My Dear Victorious Stod'
, have won the Cricket Society Literary Award.
