My sport, my love, my sadness

Much has been written in the press today about the sad and premature death of Tom Maynard. There will be much hand wrangling and much finger pointing that will occur over the next few weeks, months maybe years by the ECB and the PCA, and no doubt there will be many knee jerk reactions.

However you shall not find this commentator pointing fingers or dishing out blame for the loss of one so young is always so tragic.

When I played my beloved sport there was a notorious drink culture based around it. Most local clubs only survived because of the takings from the bar. That's probably still as true today as it was then the bar generates the profits. At Leeds in August 1977 there were two noticeable things about the first day of the Ashes Test that as a teenager I noticed. Firstly the love and passion of the Yorkshire crowd as they wooed the local Demi-God on to his 100th hundred and secondly how the Western Terrace was more stacked with beer than with people.

Even when I was trying to break into county cricket with Kent we stayed in digs and spent the night in the local hostelries of Canterbury. We all know of some of the greats love for the wine, the beer and well anything that anyone's offering. It is almost ritualistic in my beloved sport as it is ritualistic in society as a whole.

And so when the booze is not enough so cometh the drugs. Was drug taking rife in the world of cricket? Well only as it was rife in the world at large. There is no difference between the world of sport and the world in general except perhaps the celebrity status attached to it.

People drink, people take drugs that's the hard truth.

Are people bad for doing this? No they simply do it.

What are we to do about it?

Well that's a little like asking the tide to turn back. I have been working in alcohol and drugs education for the best part of 30 years now. I work with ordinary people who have ordinary lives and yes I have worked with the rich and famous too however drink and drugs are not discriminatory. They don't care who you are or what you do, they have no feelings like me and you! Poetic? Maybe, yet that's the challenge, beating the romantic notions about alcohol and drugs that have been driven into us since we left Neanderthal behind.

Educate our youngsters, educate our seniors, educate everyone and do it now. Not from a perspective of how bad you are for taking these substances but a truthful and real education about the substances that led to the tragic death of a young man so loved by his family and friends.