Silence Of The Heart: Cricket Suicides

Cricket has an alarming suicide rate. Among Test-match 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 cricket author David Frith has collected data on this sad subject. SILENCE OF THE HEART: Cricket Suicides is his compelling account of over 100 cricketers - involving top names from the past hundred years - who have taken their own lives, with an explanation of factors which 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. Another key area is the theory that cricket itself is to blame for its losses. Or is that this summer game attracts people of a melancholic and over-sensitive nature? The author attempts to dispel this suggestion. Stoddart, Shrewsbury, Gimblett, Robertson-Glasgow, Bairstow, Trott, Iverson, Barnes. . . these are the high profile cricketers who killed themselves, and their remains a sense of disbelief that they did so. And yet many more cases are examined in this extraordinary book.