As an opening batsman, Andrew Strauss made a virtue of sublimating his emotions, perfecting a body language so unruffled that you could seldom tell if he had made a century or a duck. But as a father-of-two widowed in his 40s, he has felt compelled, against his natural impulses, to show vulnerability.
How else to navigate the four-and-a-half years since the shattering loss of his wife Ruth to lung cancer? Hestill sees a bereavement counsellor, and he still assures his two sons, Sam and Luca, that there is no shame in feeling sad, or desperate, or just plain furious.
He just wishes that the subject of death itself did not have to be so difficult to broach. “It is still far too much of a taboo,” he argues. “Many people feel very uncomfortable, not knowing what to say to those who are going through it. They shudder, almost wanting to pretend that it’s not going on.
“It’s absurd, because we’re all going to be touched by death in life. Grief still feels very beneath the surface to me. And that has to change, because otherwise there will be people devoid of support or knowledge. You can be in your own little room grieving, without knowing where to turn.”
Before Ruth died at the age of 46, four days after Christmas in 2018, she left a note explaining how she wanted families facing a terminal diagnosis like hers to be better prepared for the realities of bereavement. “Do deathwell,” she said. It is this instruction that Strauss has worked ferociously to fulfil, to the point that Lord’s, the ground where he scored five Test hundreds, on Thursday turned “red for Ruth”.
Amid Ashes fervour, it is a day stitched into the tapestry of England’s sporting summer — with spectators, broadcasters and supporters wearing red to raise funds for families facing grief through cancer.
Orchestrating the spectacle, now in its fifth year, takes a toll on Strauss. “Each time we’ve done it,” he says, “I’ve been utterly exhausted by the end.” Ruth, he suggests, would be “bashful” at seeing the home of cricket rendered a riot of red in her honour. He chose red for no more complex reason than it was her favourite colour.
We sit down at a gleaming office block in White City, where Strauss is between board meetings. The former England captain, 46, is one of only three men, alongside Len Hutton and Mike Brearley, to have led the country to Ashes series victories both home and away. While the feat brought him a knighthood in 2019, he is aware there is a living that must be earned.
A veteran of 100 Tests, he has wasted little time furnishing his expertise, combining senior roles at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) with setting up Mindflick, a performance psychology business whose clients include treble-winners Manchester City.
The grace with which Ruth reconciled herself to her fate has emphatically left its mark on Strauss. “Our time is limited, and therefore I need to be more conscious about what I do and don’t do. This might mean experiencing things that weren’t appealing to me before, or saying no to things even though I don’t want to let people down. But most of all, it means keeping the people most important to me happy.”
The Daily Telegraph in London
