“It was like I was on a train that I knew was going to crash,” Nick Compton says as he describes how he struggled with his mental health during the last few years of his cricket career. “I could get off at the next station or I could stay on this train, which had a faulty wheel. But if I got out at the station would another train come? There was no guarantee, so I thought: ‘Fuck this, I’m staying on it.’ But I knew the crash was coming.”
Compton played 16 Tests for England between 2012 and 2016, scored two centuries, enjoyed an average opening partnership of 54 with Alastair Cook and won four of the five series he played in, including India and South Africa away. He also scored 12,168 first-class runs at an average of 40.42 and, as the grandson of Denis Compton, his name belongs in the pantheon of English cricket.
