Glad players are addressing mental-health issues: Brian Lara

MUMBAI: A lot of professional players have come out in the open about having to cope with the pressure and stress that invariably accompany fame and glory of international cricket. A few like Aussie cricketers Glenn Maxwell, Will Pucovski and Nic Maddinson have approached their cricket boards to seek help.Maxwell, for example, stepped down from the Australian team midway through the T20Is against Sri Lanka. Maddinson pulled out of the Australia ‘A’ team ahead of their match against the touring Pakistan side. Pucovski went a step ahead and asked the selectors not to consider him for a Test debut. All of them took time off from the sport. India skipper Virat Kohli too mentioned that he has had to cope with mental health issues. He was particularly perturbed during India’s tour of England in 2014 where Jimmy Anderson seemed to have the wood over him and he mentioned about going through a bad time then and how he was unable to discuss his insecurities with anyone.West Indies great Brian Lara, who was in the city as a chief guest to launch a charity golf event, cited his own example and said that he would lie down in his room and sometimes feel the despair of having failed to succeed. “Players are at least standing up and saying ‘I need to just remove myself, fight myself and come back again',” he said. “My international career began in 1989 and till about 1995, it was going upwards and everything seemed well. But I don’t think a lot of people will appreciate my career-graph between 1995-98. It was on a downward spiral. I could feel the pressures of being a double world-record holder. It played its part and the West Indies team was also on a decline.“I remember on occasions where I lay in my room feeling the despair. It is real, it is part of all it,” Lara said. The batting great, who won many a battle for West Indies almost single-handedly in the early and mid-90s, felt that mental stress is particularly more with such a chock-a-block international calendar these days.“In the '70s and '80s, we played for the love of the game, we played for our country, we loved Test cricket, we wanted to get out there in the middle. The big names would even play first-class cricket. These days, with all the franchise cricket going around in the world, the intensity of the game sometimes is a burden. Guys are playing for England and not playing County cricket. Guys are playing for Australia and not playing Sheffield Shield. That just tells you how mentally draining it is. Something that we should stand up and pay attention to,” Lara added.Warner should’ve been given the opportunity to go for my recordLara felt that Australia should have given David Warner an opportunity to go for his record of 400 during the second Test against Pakistan, which Australia won by an innings and a day to spare. “I felt that David (Warner) should have been given an opportunity to go for it. I happened to be in Adelaide and I thought it was kind of destiny being there. I felt maybe just send a message out that you have 10 overs to do something. End of the day, the decision was right, they won the match with a day to spare, maybe he could have been given the opportunity but that’s how it is,” Lara said.Lara pays tribute to Willis“Bob Willis is former great from England. He was before my time, but I have listened to the tributes from people like Ian Botham and Michael Atherton that he (Willis) was pivotal in England moving forward, especially in the fast-bowling department. And that he laid the foundation and a lot look at him as a father figure in that department. "Ian Botham told me that there was only one fast bowler in his team and that was Bob Willis; there were lot of medium-pacers, but Willis was the fast bowler."It’s not selfishness, but many times I listen to that statement Bob (Willis) made, when I swept the ball from Gareth Batty to backward square leg for a single and reach 400 at Antigua in 2004. Bob said then: ‘That maybe the most significant single in the history of Test cricket’. I remember that like it was yesterday and he will be in my memory for a long time.”