The Guardian Women’s Cricketer of the Year is an award given to a player who has done something truly remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty. Sarah Taylor is the inaugural winner

On 19 November last year the two things Sarah Taylor knew were that she did not want to be where she was, and that she could not bring herself to go anywhere else. Two days earlier, England had lost a T20 match to Australia in Sydney. The defeat meant England could not win the Ashes. After it, Taylor’s thoughts drifted. She started to worry about the long flight home later that week. Taylor tries to avoid aeroplanes. It is not a phobia – she likes flight, even enjoys the turbulence – it is that once the plane is up, there is no way off. And she is someone who needs to know she can make a quick getaway. That is why she decided to drive to the next match in Canberra, when everyone else flew.

The journey was supposed to take three hours but seemed to go on so long she was utterly exhausted by the time she arrived. There was no time to recover because England had to play again the very next day. The panic started when she got to the ground. “It’s hard to explain,” she says. “Sometimes I tell people it’s like when you’re hungover, you feel really dehydrated, and like someone’s sitting on your head. Sometimes you’re in a crowd and you just feel like everyone’s on top of you, and you start to feel warm, and you just completely lose control. Anxiety is about losing control of your own thoughts.”

I’ve had games where I was sick because I was so nervous ... I hated cricket for such a long time

Always though, her breathing goes. It turns shallow and she starts to feel faint. “It’s completely irrational at the time, and you know it’s irrational, but you can’t change it.” She was not sure she could play that day. Then she saw her teammate, Tammy Beaumont, put on a pair of wicketkeeping gloves and start to warm up and something in her snapped. “As soon as I saw that I was like: ‘Nah, I’m not having that, I need to get my gloves on.’” She told England’s coach, Mark Robinson: “We need to get me through this.” So Taylor played. Between every over, her teammates fed her sweets to help her control her breathing, and put an iced towel around her neck to cool her down.

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Half an hour into Australia’s innings, England’s quick Katherine Brunt was bowling, and Taylor was standing up to the stumps behind Elyse Villani, Australia’s No 3. Villani stepped from her crease, swung her bat across the line and missed the ball. Taylor caught it, Villani stretched her foot back towards the crease, and in that split-second Taylor broke the bails. Villani was out for one run, stumped. It was a brilliant dismissal any time, let alone by a keeper fighting off a panic attack and feeling as if they might faint any minute. Brunt did not celebrate with Taylor but folded her into a hug and whispered, “Well done”. England won by 40 runs.

“Weirdly enough, I think actually playing that day did me more good than sitting in the changing room worrying,” Taylor says now. “Sometimes cricket is the trigger but then sometimes it’s my comfort zone, too.” Sport can be both the cause and the cure. Not that Taylor ever expects to be entirely rid of her illness, just that she hopes to learn to cope with it. “I think I will always have it to be honest, I think it is just an ongoing battle. But I’m not ashamed of it. I’m still a good person, I can still have a laugh. And I still can’t accept compliments or awards.” Which is unlucky, because she gets a lot of both.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sarah Taylor has been called the world’s best wicketkeeper by Adam Gilchrist. Photograph: Anna Gordon/Guardian

This is another. Taylor is the first winner of the Guardian’s new women’s cricketer of the year award, because of her batting and keeping, of course, and also the work she has done to raise awareness about mental illness. This year she was a key part of the England team who won two one-day series and a T20 tri-series against New Zealand and South Africa, of the Sussex team who won promotion to the county championship first division, and the Surrey team who won the Kia Super League. Her keeping has become so good that Adam Gilchrist, who may well keep in the all-time team to play Mars, says that right now she is the “best in the world – male or female”.

A ridiculous amount of people deal with anxiety. I wanted to let people know it was OK just to talk about it

On Friday it was announced that she will miss the World T20 in the West Indies later this year as she continues to manage her anxiety, a mutual decision taken by Taylor and England’s management team. When Taylor talks about her year so far, the word she uses most is “unscathed”. She is happy she came through it. Taylor is 29, and says a bad year might have pushed her into retirement. It is not difficult to see why she has therefore decided to skip the tournament in the West Indies.

There have been low moments along the way. When England broke the world record T20 score, Taylor watched as her teammates blazed 147 from the first 79 balls for the opening wicket. “I was like: ‘I can’t do that’ and all of a sudden you doubt yourself, your anxiety kicks in and then you go into panic mode. The last thing I wanted to do was go out there and bat.” She did not. England sent Nat Sciver in instead. “And then you breathe out in relief.”

Taylor has suffered like this for a long time. Only when it first started, she did not know what it was, and the team, even the sport, was not set up to provide her with the necessary support. “I’ve had games where I was sick because I was so nervous. And I thought it was normal. I thought: ‘Everyone goes through this.’ But actually I was having a panic attack.” She started to blame the game. “I thought: ‘Cricket’s done this to me, I don’t have this in my normal life, I hate cricket.’ And I did. I hated cricket for such a long time.” She tried to tell people about it but she did not have the words and they did not have the understanding.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Taylor has returned from a break to win tournaments with England, Sussex and Surrey in the last year. Photograph: Anna Gordon/Guardian

“There was almost a stigma, it was a case of ‘brush it off, you’re fine.’ It was a sign of weakness to say anything.” She does not blame anyone, “because at the time if someone had said that to me I would have been like: ‘It’s all right, just go have a good night’s sleep.’ But I like to think that now it would be dealt with a lot better.” It would. She says Robinson has been “unbelievable”. He maps out her season, looking for stress points like long trips between back-to-back matches, and tells her that when she is struggling he will be happy if she can simply get into her kit and out on to the field, let alone score any runs.

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Taylor does not say it but she has helped push through that change too, by talking so honestly about her illness. In her lowest moment, when she took an indefinite break from the game in 2016, she decided she wanted to give an interview to the BBC to explain what was going on. “I think initially England said I had ‘personal issues’ and I wasn’t happy with that. I didn’t want people second-guessing me. So I said: ‘No, look, this is what’s going on.’ I’m not ashamed of it and I never have been. There’s a ridiculous amount of the population that suffers from it. And I wanted to let people know that it was OK to just talk about it.”

Eighteen months later, Taylor’s teammate and friend Kate Cross felt able to speak about her own depression and anxiety too – how it had been so bad that she had spent three days in bed, crying to herself before England’s tour of the West Indies. “We were best mates for years but we never told each other,” Taylor says. “But I guess we didn’t know what it was at the time.” Now the team is a lot more open. “There’s a handful of girls who will say they have suffered with something, or they feel like they might be.” Taylor worries that in the lower levels of the sport, around the counties, players are not getting the support they need and that they will not until the women’s game has turned professional.

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As we finish talking, a shy young boy in a Middlesex kit comes up to ask for Taylor’s autograph. This happens a lot these days. “I even get the dads coming up to me saying: ‘Can you sign my gloves?’ I think that just shows where the women’s game has gone.” But the fans she really treasures are not always the ones who want to talk cricket.

“I had one girl get in touch this summer. She suffers from anxiety as well. I think she’s from Essex, and she got a train all the way to Guildford to come and watch me play for Surrey, and it was, I think, one of the hardest things she’s done. So if people say to me: ‘What did I win this summer?’ Well I got a message from her and a card at the end of the season. That’s what I won.”