Coping with life on tour

Gatting on his way to a century in Australia in 1995

By Tom Fordyce BBC Sport Online

How tough is it for international cricketers on long tours of faraway countries?

Former England captain Mike Gatting captained England to Australia in 1986-7, the last time they won the Ashes.

When you first come back, your kids look at you and think, who are you?

Mike Gatting

The experiences of that tour, and the many others he undertook with England, have left him sympathetic to the plight of Graham Thorpe.

Thorpe has pulled out of England's winter tour Down Under in order to resolve personal problems at home.

Thorpe quits Ashes tour

Gatting told BBC Sport Online that even on that successful tour in 1986, he found it an enormous strain being away from his wife and young children.

"You almost have to switch off the emotions and become a bit of an ice-man," said Gatting.

"You can talk to your wife and kids on the phone, but it is not the same as them actually being with you and you spending time with them.

"It's tough when you have young children. My eldest son Andrew bore the brunt. I didn't see Andrew on his birthday for about nine years, and that's really sad.

Emburey and Gatting celebrate Ashes success in 1986

"Your wife has to leave pictures of you around the house and talk to the kids about you, otherwise they forget who you are.

"When you first come back, especially when your kids are young, they look at you and think, who are you?

"There's email and there are faxes, but you have to actually speak to them. We used to write letters, but it was no substitute for seeing someone.

"Even phone calls can be quite stressful, because you and your wife do miss each other.

"You have to have a special relationship and a special family to be able to cope with it."

Back to the old routine

It can be just as hard returning from a tour and adjusting to ordinary life.

"You get used to a certain way of life on tour," said Gatting. "When you get home that suddenly changes.

"You've been used to doing what you want to do, and then suddenly there are other people in your life again who you have been trying not to think about for four months.

"You're up early on tour, but you don't have nappies to change or kids to get to school.

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"You really look forward to getting home, but breaking the tour routine is very hard."

Gatting said the support of team-mates, however well-meaning, can only help to a limited extent.

"You have to steel yourself. You're out there playing for your country, and you have a job to do.

"You have to cope with the other side of it, with the fact that your wife is at home alone with two kids.

"You have to ask yourself, if I can't cope with this, should I really be going?

"You can't afford to have players who are mentally elsewhere. If you see someone struggling, you have to put an arm around them and help them get through it.

Gatting: needed to be an ice-man

"I've got a lot of sympathy for Thorpe. Graham Gooch turned down a tour in 1986 because his twins were being born, and I did the same in 1983 when my first son was being born.

"Your home life is a delicate area, even when you haven't been through a messy divorce like Thorpe.

"I hope we see him back in the Test team, because he's a wonderful player and England are poorer without him.

"The good thing now is that the ECB pay for the players' wives and children to go out and see them.

"But you also have more Test matches and more one-dayers in the calendar - and that makes it harder than it was in my day."