Coming Back To Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick. Marcus Trescothick

       Chapter 1

       THE END

      ‘That sadness swept over me. The thing I had feared most was happening and, if my previous experiences were anything to go by, the process was as unstoppable as a domino chain.’

      In the good times, the times before the long days and longer nights when depressive illness turned stretches of my life into a slow death, I had occasionally caught a glimpse of the perfect end to my career as an England cricketer; at The Oval, pausing on my way back to the dressing-room to acknowledge the applause celebrating the Test century with which I had just secured England’s latest Ashes victory.

      That was what I saw in my sunlit daydreams. That was how it was supposed to happen.

      The reality? Hunched-up, sobbing, distraught, slumped in a corner of Dixon’s electrical store at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, unable to board the 9 p.m. Virgin Airways Flight VS400 to Dubai for which I had checked in alongside my Somerset CCC team-mates on the evening of Friday 14 March 2008; but which I was now in no physical, mental or earthly state to take, hanging on for the pain and terror with which I had become so familiar during the previous two years to subside, and let me breathe.

      I almost made it. I got almost as far as it is possible to get without actually walking through the door onto the plane and I had wanted to so much. Until the very eve of our departure, in the weeks leading up to it, I never seriously thought that I would have a problem going on the 12-day pre-2008-season tournament also featuring Lancashire, Sussex and Essex. I was well in myself and I was cautiously optimistic about what getting through the trip might mean in terms of my hopes of a future with England, even though my last appearance for them was now 18 months behind me. England’s players, selectors, management, coaches and captains had all stated that, while they had no desire to put me under undue pressure to return, when I felt I was ready, so would they be. This was a real chance to find out if I was. The tournament was to be pretty low-key though Andrew Flintoff would be there to continue his recovery programme following his latest ankle operation back at home, with relatively little of the intense media coverage I had always found so discomforting.

      All things considered I was looking forward to the test and what a successful outcome might mean, even though I knew failure would end all hope and all argument. After two aborted overseas tours with England, to India in 2006 and Australia the same winter, I knew it would be strike three – you’re out.

      I had spoken to my wife Hayley, who had given