Cricket's support for Tim Ambrose and Darren Cousins shows game has grown up For there must be others out there who have been suffering in silence. After all, about one in six adults apparently suffers from depression, and there are more than 350 professional cricketers in this country. The huge courage of Ambrose and Cousins will hopefully encourage others to seek help, as, say, the former New Zealand bowler Iain O'Brien did last year after listening to Michael Vaughan's radio programme on the subject. Unfortunately there has been no formal research done on depression in cricket or any other sport, only admissions from Trescothick, Michael Yardy, Lou Vincent and others. There have been two exhaustively researched books on the suicides of cricketers by the estimable David Frith, but these are no statistical analyses. And, understandably, there can be no conclusion as to the part played by cricket in these suicides. Mike Brearley writes in the foreword to the second book Silence of the Heart: "In the end it is not, of course, cricket which causes suicide. People kill themselves for reasons that are internal to them and their history. Frith says he has always "tried to get cricket off the hook" in that respect, but has to admit that "the statistics are discouraging." Spookily Peter Roebuck wrote the foreword to Frith's first book. "Some people have predicted a gloomy end for this writer," he wrote of himself. It will not be so. Last year Roebuck committed suicide. In that foreword Roebuck also suggested that cricket attracts suicidal types. That cannot be so. Surely it is the relentless nature of the game that affects its participants, playing with their minds. Other sports provide their own difficulties but cricket seems an especially cruel mistress. For a team sport it can be so lonely. It is not just the hours and months spent away from one's family in nondescript hotel rooms, but also the length of time the game takes to play, as well as the time between failure and the next opportunity to put things right. All this can lead to brooding introspection, as well as the loss of a support network of friends. And as Brearley says in that foreword: "For a batsman, getting out means leaving the arena altogether and being hors de combat for hours and days - a symbolic loss or death." It can be brutal on the mind. For a professional the enjoyment can go. I know there was a lot of my cricket career I did not enjoy. The inevitable failures can do that, bringing anxiety and gloom. But that is not to say I was necessarily depressed, maybe just a serious professional who suffered periods of deep disappointment and insecurity, my self-worth mostly determined by the amount of runs scored. But I was certainly not the youth who entered the game bursting with love for every second of playing cricket. For others the problems are profound. Recognising that difference is key. We are clearly at the stage where the players of today do not instinctively consider a mental health problem as a weakness - as would have been the case in most cricket dressing-rooms I inhabited - but the next step is to increase their knowledge on the subject. The PCA are addressing it with gusto.