SA cricket’s ‘toughen up or give up’ culture changing

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Johannesburg

Luke Pomersbach is the latest in a lengthening line of cricketers who have been forced out of the game by mental illness. But there is a difference this time - Pomersbach is Australian.

Usually, cricket’s victims of stress, anxiety and depression are English, from Steve Harmison to Marcus Trescothick to Ashley Giles to Jonathan Trott.

If they are not English, they have other problems. Pomersbach has had serious brushes with the law and New Zealand’s Lou Vincent, another depressive, is an admitted match-fixer.

But the theory is not that neatly un-South African: Trott was born and raised in Cape Town. Could it be that as many of SA’s players struggle with mental issues as those in other countries, but dare not breathe a word about their condition because they live in an unaccepting society?

“I really appreciate all the help and support that I have received from Queensland Cricket over the past three years and especially over the past couple of months leading up to this difficult decision to leave professional cricket so that I can put all my efforts into getting better and making a full recovery,” Pomersbach said when he announced his retirement earlier this month.

No player who has remained in sunny SA has publicly said anything of the sort in connection with depression, nor even acknowledged falling victim to the illness. According to Johannesburg-based psychologist Jaydon Immerman, that will not happen for decades to come.

“Most sports codes in this country don’t seem to believe in sport psychology,” Immerman said, adding that he had been offered his services to sport organisations free of charge but had been turned down.

“We’re quite a conservative society, and we are probably 20 or 30 years behind other countries in terms of sport psychology. That’s one of the reasons SA teams are not as victorious as they might be.”

According to the SA Cricketers’ Association website, the organisation offers its members counselling from “a national network of highly qualified, experienced professionals” in everything from sex addiction to eating disorders to dealing with debt and, yes, depression.

For much of Lance Klusener’s career, those options were not on the table. “You would have been told, ‘We’ll find someone else; it was a case of toughen up or give up,” Klusener said.

“But now the world is a lot more complicated than it used to be. There’s a lot more money in the game and with it comes a lot of pressure to make things work for you.”

Klusener himself is a prime example of the strong silent type of player common to SA cricket, and old habits die hard: “I have players saying to me, ‘I’m in a really good space today, coach’. But what does that mean?”

However, as coach of the Dolphins, Klusener has mellowed enough to allow Christo Spies - “he’s not a psychologist, more of a life coach” - into his dressingroom.

“I’d say 75% of what Christo does with the players is about life away from cricket,” Klusener said. “If he can sort that out and the players arrive at the ground ‘in a good space’, I’m happy.”

The Dolphins won the T20 title last season, their first success since 2001-02 discounting the first-class championship they shared with the Eagles in 2005-06.

Klusener’s team won 14 of their 30 matches across all formats last summer and lost only seven. The season before that, they won nine and lost 15.

“The success we have achieved is to a large degree due to Christo,” Klusener said. “I’ve seen it work.”