Andrew Flintoff's voyage of discovery follows a well-worn and painful path Recognition, though, is but the start. Now that the experiences of Marcus Trescothick, Stan Collymore and Jonny Wilkinson, among others, have demonstrated that even our great sporting heroes can suffer as badly as an estimated 10 per cent of the wider population, what needs to be made clear is that this is not a condition that has a simple cause or set of symptoms. More to the point, elite sport itself, far from serving as a buffer to the ailment, far from offering its practitioners admission to some sort of emotional paradise, may well exacerbate it. This is what is at the core of Harbach's novel. It centres on a baseball prodigy, Henry Skrimshander, playing in the college leagues, who suddenly succumbs to what is known in the US as Steve Blass disease. Named after the former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who, in the mid-Seventies, found himself suddenly and inexplicably unable any longer to throw a baseball, the condition ensnares Skrimshander just as he is being watched by all the major league teams. With scouts filling the bleachers of his college stadium the pressure overwhelms him, the yips become insurmountable and he messes up in a crucial match. From there, a once cheery, happy-go-lucky soul, he tumbles into a terrible black dog depression, unable to face the world, incapable of doing anything except lie in bed, his face to the wall. Watching Flintoff's documentary, it seems he might well have suffered from an undiagnosed bout of Steve Blass disease himself. Captaining his country through the disaster that was the 2007 Ashes tour, he admits he found himself unable to function as he once had. He couldn't bat, couldn't bowl, couldn't field, certainly couldn't lead. The game which seemed so easy for him over-complicated itself. Ashamed at defeat, convinced he had let down his entire nation, he tried to self-medicate with alcohol, a process which merely accelerated his sense of self-loathing. The hangover was extensive: he never recovered his former resilience. This was very different to Trescothick or Collymore, whose depression was triggered not by poor performance but by some sort of chemical malfunction in the brain. Among those Flintoff speaks to, however, it appears his was a far more common experience than we might imagine. Ricky Hatton, Graeme Dott, Jones himself: all of them found themselves with a touch of the Steve Blass, unable to respond to crisis and subsequently sinking into despair. And the point is that sport presents its practitioners with a constant diet of crisis. For the very best, moreover, crisis comes more frequently later on in a career, when onrushing chronology adds to the sense of impotence in face of declining standards. In a calling in which everything, including self-esteem, is measured by performance, the moment performance falters, a sportsman's entire view of himself takes a consequential blow. Not in every case, obviously, plenty manage to reach the oddly detached state which can treat triumph and adversity with equal disdain. Michael Owen, for instance, long ago achieved a kind of Zen-like ability not to fret about a missed chance, convincing himself that another would be along shortly. But plenty falter horribly. In Henry Skrimshander's case it is but fiction. Watching Flintoff recall his misery, however, it was all too real, like seeing a Labrador puppy sticking his nose in an open flame; a natural enthusiast brought down by ugly experience. And it is something worth noting next time we feel the urge to upbraid a sportsman for an uncharacteristic weakness in his performance. We really have no idea what is going on in his head. Watching Flintoff on Wednesday night, and seeing the misery games can deliver, you can only say: lucky us.