by Arunabha Sengupta
The boy was just more than a toddler, hardly three or four. He had been treading along the boundary rope all day as his dad and his dad’s mates played the game. In the hope that one ball would trickle towards him. He wanted to hit it.
So, when this friend of his dad lobbed him one, inviting him to have a go, he did… The older man jerked his head away as it came straight back at him. The ball sped along and crashed through a glass door. And the little boy dropped his chopped off SS-Jumbo, ran to the safety of a quiet and dark toilet, and sat wondering what his punishment would be.
Some 24 years later, standing on the dressing room balcony at Trent Bridge during Warwickshire’s game against Nottinghamshire, he was told by Ashley Giles that he would be batting at No 5 in the final Ashes Test at The Oval. Jonathan Trott’s answer was, “What about the ODI squad? Aren’t I in that?”
“There’s no one in the country I’d rather have batting for my life,” said Giles. On his Test debut, he was run out for 41 in the first innings and hit 119 in the second. Nothing new there. Trott had scored 245 in his Second XI debut and 134 in his first outing in the County Championships. At The Oval, England won the decider and thus The Ashes.
The peaks were successive, continuous and high. 184 at Lord’s against Pakistan, taking England from 102 for 7 to 434 with Stuart Broad. 203 against Sri Lanka at Cardiff. 445 runs at 89 in Australia, with hundreds in Melbourne and Sydney. 143 at Nagpur ensuring a rare series win in India. Plenty of runs in ODIs as well.
He did not get as many runs in the 2013 Ashes. However, 40 and 59 in the final Test at The Oval as England came close to sealing an epic chase was not bad. But, by then things had already started to go wrong. He had been in a flood of tears as he had sat in his car on the way to the Test match.
Then came the away tour in Australia with his struggles against Mitchell Johnson and the short ball. His helmet was hit, his confidence dented. He returned home after the first Test. The headlines were irresponsible and scathing: “It will be difficult for any England captain to trust Trott again.” and “Trott must accept team-mates and opponents will feel he did a runner.”
He returned after a year and a half and played three Tests in West Indies. Unimpressive outings including two ducks in the first two Tests decided it for him. The Bridgetown Test would be his last.
At Barbados, he gloved Shannon Gabriel to square leg, getting into a dreadful tangle. He had hardly seen the ball. His third duck in five innings.
Suddenly he found himself where he had been thirty years earlier. In a dark and silent toilet. Hoping no one would discover him. He knew his Test career was over. In the second innings he was on 9 when struck on the pads by Jerome Taylor. The umpire’s finger went up. Alastair Cook suggested going for a review. Trott shook his head. “Nah, I’m out of here.”
Trott’s Test career had begun as a fairy tale, it ended as a nightmare. Before the back-to-back Ashes of 2013-14 he averaged 50.01 in 41 Tests. He ended 11 Tests later with 3835 runs at 44.08. His ODI numbers remained impressive — 2819 runs at 51.25, ranked as high as the fifth in the world at one point of time.
Back in the county grounds, Trott relaxed and enjoyed himself. In 2018 he signed off with 1046 runs at 52.30 with three hundreds. In fact he got 1000-plus in all his last three seasons, 2016-2018. All the while the Jennings, the Malans, the Denlys, the Vinces, the Stonemans and other pretenders tried to fill the gaping hole in the England line-up.
His story is a cautionary tale—of what stress can do to a professional cricketer.
Jonathan Trott was born on April 22, 1981.