Steven Finn opens up on mental well being and dark days of his Eng career

England fast bowler Steven Finn, once known for his deadly outswingers and the ability to swing the ball at sheer pace, has come out with his side of the story behind a horrific run in the 2013-14 season, which saw him being sent back to England from a tour down under. 

Talking about it to The Cricket Monthly, Finn said, “I’d got sent home from (the 2013-14) tour because I found myself down a rabbit hole that was so hard to get out of... If I was braver and more confident in knowing what was going on, I'd have probably sent myself home a long time before I did get sent home," he revealed, signifying the amount of trauma he had been through. 

The pain and mental illness started from the time when Finn’s hitting the stumps at the non-striker's end with his legs while delivering the ball became so frequent that ICC had to make a law. This rule deemed a delivery bowled with the bowler hitting the stumps at the other end a no-ball. It’s often called ‘Finn’s Law’.  “It's frustrating that it happened - a knee-jerk reaction from the ICC to change the rules of the game that had a knock-on effect on me,” he said about the law. 

Finn, 31, has been plagued by injuries and, thanks to that, he hasn’t played a single game since 2017, having debuted in 2010-11. Talking about the trauma that he went through after the law change, Finch told the publication, “You're in your hotel room in tears, or if someone asks you about your bowling, you get really emotional, because you're in this rabbit hole where you don't see a way out. Every day you're practicing and there are people lining up behind the nets to watch you suffer through the process.”

Saying that it was the right decision to send him, the Middlesex bowler also agreed that he wasn’t able to express himself better, mostly because he wasn’t willing to listen to his inner self. 

“People are aware and willing to talk and be vulnerable. I wasn't willing to be vulnerable and honest about my mental state and that cost me. 

“You're not selectable because your mental frame of mind is affecting how you are performing, and if you were to go out onto a pitch, you'd be more fragile than you would usually be,” he added. 

But where did he learn to bowl so close to the stumps and did it ever cause problems in his childhood? Did he knock stumps back then as well? Answering such questions, the man with the record for fastest Englishman to 50 Test wickets said, “I loved Glenn McGrath when I was a kid. He was my favorite bowler ever - I'm ashamed to say it but for the '99 World Cup, I had an Australia shirt.

“I loved how he and Shaun Pollock and those guys got real tight to the stumps. From watching McGrath get so close to the stumps and have that little dart in, it naturally came into my game as a result of trying to copy him,” explained Finn, who has 125 wickets in 36 Tests for the English side. 

What added more to Finn’s mental pressure was the fact that players couldn’t talk more freely to the press back then. Finn, who plans to detail his playing career through various talks as motivational lessons in the future, also said in the interview, “We had a wall up around ourselves at that time, and this was part of the regime: you don't say anything to the press that isn't acceptable. It meant the media didn't get a true depiction of what we were like as people. Now I think, you do interviews with players and they seem more like humans - you know more about where they're at." 

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