Meet Mark Saxby - the man who kept England sane in the bubble

No normal sport in an abnormal society, so it was said during apartheid. Yet last summer there was. Anyone in future watching replays of England’s cricket against West Indies and Pakistan, Ireland and Australia, would never guess that England were playing in the most abnormal society ever known in peacetime.

In their bio-bubbles, at Old Trafford and Southampton, England’s cricketers helped to show the world that Britain was open for business; were first to provide live international team sport; first to give us day-long distractions from the pandemic. The players, locked inside two grounds for weeks or months, gave us a taste of normality without going stir-crazy, or losing their rag, or failing one coronavirus test. Team-work as never seen before.

If there was a single person keeping the players sane, it was the England Player Support Coach. (It is usually the people who make wheels go round, without a song or dance, who are overlooked.) Mark Saxby, 52, immediately credits the England team culture; but then, when England held their epoch-making meeting in Colombo in 2017 and Joe Root and Eoin Morgan established the three core values which would drive the team in future, Saxby, along with some senior players and management, was involved in drawing them up.

Saxby joined England in 2005 as the team Sports Massage Therapist, before growing into the role of support coach. Of course he had never seen anything like it when Covid struck in March - except the winter tour of South Africa was almost a dress rehearsal, when most of the team fell ill during the Boxing Day Test, which England not unnaturally lost, and players had to isolate in their hotel rooms. “In South Africa we all pitched in, and we bounced back at Cape Town, demonstrating the magnetic power of vulnerability, which drew everyone in to support each other.” England, united, went on to win 3-1.

“At the outset we recognised that England cricketers have the ability to put smiles on people’s faces,” Saxby said. “Many families were suffering at the start of this summer, and we were cognisant also that we were in a privileged position to be not only in employment but were able to bring enjoyment into people’s lives.”.

“We then acknowledged that the season was going to be very odd - especially as it came on the back of having spent 100 days at home, after the tour of Sri Lanka was abandoned in March, which is far longer than most players have ever spent at home in their career. From late June onwards it was like being on tour - except that we were close to home without being able to go home. And society was now going in the opposite direction in that we were locked down at Old Trafford and the Ageas Bowl while the rest of society was having restrictions lifted.

“Months before a ball was bowled the ECB put the well-being of the players first.  We are grateful to our doctors, psychologists and other support like the hotel and ground staff who helped us all through this unprecedented summer. Under-pinning it all was our dressing-room culture, our values and behaviours that bind us together and help us stay level. Courage, Respect, Unity: those were the three core values which Eoin and Joe had laid down in Colombo, and one of my roles is to keep the process going. Our values give us clarity and something to judge ourselves on, other than results on the field. These values are evident throughout the pathway and are promoted by the excellent staff and players working with the Young Lions and Lions.

“We stressed the importance of having the courage to reach out for support: to avoid a bottle, bottle, bang scenario and don’t suffer in silence. We stressed the importance of respecting other people’s anxieties: some players for example were more comfortable with this scenario and being away from home, others are not. We emphasised that whoever you are, experienced or not, you matter, this is a safe space and it’s ok to feel vulnerable. As an elite sporting environment, it is rightly a very challenging one but in equal measure, it is a very supportive one, with players and staff playing their part in this.”

It is inconceivable that England cricketers of previous generations would have coped. It was every man for himself before central contracts were introduced in 1999. There were two traditional diversions - one of them, alcohol, is now severely restricted by nutritionists while the other activity is impossible in a bio-bubble. As some compensation in this summer’s hotels they were offered a golf simulator, and a golf course at the Ageas; a Formula 1 simulator; table tennis; numerous quizzes; pool and darts, in addition to the players’ own video games.

“Joe Denly was in charge of the card school, and when he left, Zak Crawley took over,” Saxby recalled. “Chris Woakes brought his coffee machine and serves an excellent coffee. Mark Wood, Jimmy Anderson and Rory Burns ran a very good quiz night, and we got through the summer unscathed. Those three words - Courage, Respect and Unity - mean a lot to us, and it bodes well for the future.”

Before talking about what made him so attuned to the England players, probably more than any non-cricketer has been, Saxby makes special mention of the 12th men. Jack Leach did not play a game after the initial warm-up between the Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler teams: not a single one of the six Tests, after being National Hero Number 2 the previous August. James Bracey, Gloucestershire’s keeper and opening batsman, was also present for every Test without playing; Ben Foakes for five Tests, and Wood much of the time.

“They were utterly selfless and gave so much to the group, as the best 12th men do. Music and humour played a big part,” Saxby said. The TV cameras often picked up Saxby talking to them on the bench. “But they were on a tight rota: they had to do their physical work, and their cricket skills, and rest, as well as be 12th man.” On the last damp afternoon of the Test series against Pakistan, Bracey took a neat catch at short-leg, as a small tangible reward, before everyone piled into cars and headed home to something nearer normality.

Saxby has rare sensibilities. He lends a sympathetic ear whether you are a player or coach or a journalist fed up with being six months away from home: “break it down and just look a short time ahead - like the next hour, think of three things you are grateful for and is there something to look forward to?” And this is the first time he has explained why.

As a legspinner he played club cricket in Nottinghamshire and for a works team along with his three brothers and father until, in January of 2005, his father died suddenly from complications of prostate cancer. Mark tried to revive him, unsuccessfully.

“I carried a lot of guilt for not being able to resuscitate my dad and divorce soon followed, my own well-being was low for a long time… and it was cricket and the people around me that occupied and carried me. That experience though has shaped me as a person and practitioner. I work with a brilliant team of players and staff. I am fortunate also in my role as massage therapist: working in a quiet and private space allows me to deeply listen to players and staff and establish a trusting and supportive relationship.

“Massage is still my first discipline but there seemed to be a niche there for player support as I had also completed a coaching skills course through the Institute of Leadership and Management.” Having worked for England through the Ashes of 2005, he has not only been there ever since but promoted last year to Player Support Coach by the team director Ashley Giles.

“Firstly, he (Mark) has a high level of emotional intelligence and empathy but probably most importantly he has developed a really strong level of trust with the players,” Giles said. “They are prepared to open up to him and share things they might not with others. Well-being and psychological support is an area we are definitely going to focus more on. We have to, given the workload and Covid.” But the current blend is good, of hard men and soft, like Paul Collingwood and Graham Thorpe, as tough as veterans come, and Saxby and the head coach Chris Silverwood, as kind and considerate as any former fast bowler could be.

On an England tour of the West Indies, Saxby met his second wife, in St Lucia. So he has an extra insight into the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, which was another impact on the start of England’s season.

“Diversity has always been important to me and it suddenly took on a deeper meaning for the whole group and our sport. When we won the World Cup, we felt it resonating, accepting the synergy that diversity brings to a group.  It clearly gave us a competitive advantage and it’s not only an example to counties and clubs to invest in the richness of diversity but to organisations up and down the country.  We felt that by supporting BLM in our way and the British Asian Trust, it helped shine a light on social injustice and it was a natural extension of one of the cornerstones of our dressing room culture - that being, ‘to respect difference and the history that our cap represents.’

England’s Test team is by no means so diverse as the one-day side, limited at present to Jofra Archer. He was the only player to break the bio-bubble, by going home between Tests, and isolated for five days in his room at Old Trafford. “He is a very popular member of our group and we made sure he received very good all-round support. A number of staff and players would check on him, and he had some training devices to help him to stay in shape,” Saxby said.

“Events of the summer got us developing further our key off-field character traits such as gratitude, empathy and social awareness. As a result of that we as a group and our organisation are looking to become more deeply involved in promoting inclusion and diversity in our sport through projects to help the BAME community.”

Watch this space for the England cricket team’s next delivery.