He said he'd ban social media if he could, but knew it wasn't practicable. "At the end of a day's play, the first thing they do is go through their Twitter feed," Law said. "There might be one or two [posts], there might be a thousand saying how bad you are. "It's going to start playing on your mind. If you keep getting told you're not very good, you're going to start believing it. I'd encourage any player [to] ditch your social media while you're a player. [But] it's their life." Essex captain Tom Westley, who played five Tests for England in 2017, said he tried to abide by coach Graham Thorpe's advice to read media only when in form. His trouble at England level was that it didn't leave much. Then there were friends and family. "Like my mum," he said. "'Can you believe what Shane Warne has said in the paper?'. 'Actually, mum, I haven't looked at it'. But ultimately, you do look." Highly credentialed sports psychologist Andrea Furst, an Australian who has worked with Olympic teams here and in the UK and is now consulting to Surrey county cricket club, says cricket's problem is that between long playing hours and high volume of travel, a player is never off duty.

"In addition to that, you've got anxiety around performance," she said. "So many eyes, pretty much 24-7. People aren't able to have breakfast without the eyes of staff watching them. Not necessarily every move they make, but it's far from the confines of your own home, where you can completely relax. "You're on a lot. You're in that flight-or-fight stage, rather than rest-and-digest. We've got to give them ways they can recover, disengage, decompress." Glenn Maxwell, back in the game after taking a break to deal with his mental health. Credit:Getty Images Another well-regarded Australian sports psych is Graham Winter, who played for South Australia, has worked with the Australian Test team and three Australian Olympic teams and written books on the mental stresses in cricket. He notes an oddity in the way cricketers prepare that leaves them vulnerable to creeping mental demons. "There are not many sports where there is such a difference between the practice environment and the competitive environment," he said. "I don't believe coaches come to grips with that very well."