May across the UK is Mental Health Awareness Month, an opportunity for people around the country to start conversations about mental health.
The positive and negative sides of mental health and wellbeing are a huge part of cricket at all levels and Opening Up Cricket are doing great work in getting cricketers across the country talking about their mental state and addressing heavier topics such as suicide prevention by delivering sessions and workshops at clubs and universities.
Mark Boyns founded Opening Up Cricket in 2014 in response to his Sefton Park CC teammate Alex Miller taking his own life in 2012.
The organisation was created with the aim of speaking to local cricketers about the experience of losing Alex in the hope that talking about suicide could prevent further tragedies.
Fast forward to the present day and Opening Up Cricket have delivered more than 400 sessions across the UK and Australia and continue to go from strength to strength.
“We wanted to do something to remember him [Alex] by and it became apparent that the best way of doing that would be to use the power of cricket to talk about a topic that might not get into discussion,” said Boyns.
“Alex’s biggest passion in his life was his cricket and at times it was an opportunity to have some distance from the troubles he was going through.
“So, using the positives of the sport to try and start these conversations we developed this idea that might be the way to go about trying to initially educate people about the loss we’d had.
“But as time’s gone on we’ve realised that all the stuff from cricket in terms of the mental skills and the mental fitness you need to do well at cricket are skills that can be transferred to anything else. Ultimately, it’s a positive message rather than one that’s just focused on avoiding setbacks.”
Opening Up Cricket’s team, trustees and supporters include a range of people from across the world of cricket and beyond, such as Sefton Park skipper Paul Horton, previously of Lancashire, England Women seamer Kate Cross, Southern Brave all-rounder Tara Norris, The Sunday Times’ Chief Football Correspondent Jonathan Northcroft, Warwickshire seamer Ethan Bamber, and Sussex batter Tom Alsop.
“There’s the suicide prevention aspect which is always mentioned in the sessions that we do,” says Boyns. “Whether that be for people to have awareness of the signs or also to signpost them towards where services are available.
“We tend to do a lot more in general on the health and wellbeing side from that perspective of trying to catch things earlier and to lean on the positives.
“We have quite a bit where we focus on the experiences of professional players and how they use different techniques to help them perform. Those techniques can be used in any setting you happen to be in.”
While the majority of the people and organisations that Opening Up Cricket work with are cricket players and cricket clubs, they will take a session from anyone who asks as long as it’s within a cricket setting, previously having worked with coaching companies and staff from county boards.
They work from professional level right down to grassroots, having previously run a session with Yorkshire CCC players, and can cater to those involved in the game at any facet.
“We’ve had some interaction with the professional game which has been a really useful insight for us to then be able to transfer to other parts of it [the game].
“Even though people have had very different experiences of cricket, whether they’re being paid to do it for a living or paying for the experience on a weekend, we still think that the same things, particularly around the connection and the opportunity to support others is a theme that anyone who’s involved in the game can understand.”
A big part of an Opening Up Cricket session is getting people comfortable with talking about difficult subjects surrounding mental health and planting the seed, so to speak, that’s it’s okay to bring up these types of topics of conversation.
“If a club’s invited us in they’re keen on the topic anyway, so the feedback is favourable because we’re able to match what they want with what we can provide.
“It can help them have a conversation about this in their club and make it a topic which having had someone come in to give the prompt they then find it a bit more natural to be able to then carry on with that.”
Boyns is keen to stress that Opening Up Cricket is available as a resource to anyone. He can be contacted directly through the website or on social media and whether someone has an idea for their club or they want to book a session, they are there to help start a conversation.
For more information, visit openingupcricket.com.