Swanky hotels all around the world, big pay checks, playing sport to pay the bills and adoring fans who will do anything just for a photo with you. Sounds like fun, right? It is, for most of the time. But cricket, more than any other sports, lends itself to depression and worse, suicide.
David Firth has written two books on the subject, Silence of the Heart: Cricket Suicides and By His Own Hand. Both which examine the phenomena of cricketers who have killed themselves. From Sid Barnes and James Burke in the 1970s and Montague Druitt in as far back as the 1800s. The accounts are harrowing. Burke, an Australian cricketer and a Wisden Cricketer once upon a time, went on to become a commentator. While on commentary duty during an Ashes Test, he bought a gun from a sporting goods store and killed himself. He was 48 and he is just one of many.
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