Peter Roebuck joins long list of cricket suicides

THE cricket world is mourning the former Somerset captain and respected journalist Peter Roebuck who died after jumping from a hotel balcony in Cape Town, South Africa over the weekend.

Although he never played for England, Roebuck became one of the best-known cricketers of his generation. But as Somerset captain in the mid-1980s he fell out badly with Ian Botham after the dressing-room row that saw West Indians Viv Richards and Joel Garner leave the county.

After retiring, Roebuck moved to Australia and became a journalist, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald and commentating on ABC. He was covering the Test series in South Africa when he died.

Roebuck jumped from his sixth-floor hotel room after being interviewed by officers from the South African police's sexual crimes unit.

Writing in The Guardian, former Somerset team mate Vic Marks admitted that news of his death "was not a complete shock."

Marks explained: "One of the most gifted writers about the game was a complex man with a brilliant mind. He was also far more troubled and insecure than he liked to let on. He would bare his soul on anything to do with cricket - or politics - fearlessly, with wit and brutal honesty and often at great length. About himself he would reveal practically nothing."

He was a modern-day Harold Gimblett, another Somerset opener who took his own life, says Peter English of Cricinfo. "In the end it was a wonder he lasted so long, dealing with demons and demonising which shadowed him during his playing days and forever after."

Roebuck's name will now be added to the alarmingly long list of cricketers who have killed themselves. The sport has a reputation for suicide and depression. Recently England players Marcus Trescothick and Michael Yardy have battled mental health problems.

In 2001 writer David Frith published a book chronicling the deaths of more than 100 players who killed themselves. "Cricket has this dreadful, hidden burden,” he wrote. “It must now answer the very serious question of whether it gradually transforms unwary cricket-loving boys into brooding, insecure and ultimately self-destructive men.” ·