I t is a characteristic of our memories of cricketers that they naturally tend towards the most recent. So when immediately we think of James Taylor , it is not the nuggety, busy batsman that springs to mind, swimming against the tide as he tried to make his way in the international world, but the figure perched gamely at short leg beneath his helmet, snaffling impossible catches from the rarefied high-veld air of Johannesburg and Centurion.
First there was Hashim Amla, taken from the face of the bat as he turned Stuart Broad for what must have seemed like routine runs, the batsman returning to the dressing room with a wry smile and a shake of the head. Next came Dane Vilas, another blinder, this time off Steven Finn. Finally, in what has proved to be his last match for England, came the most bizarre of the lot, Dean Elgar as bemused as anyone as Taylor fumbled around and finally extracted the ball from his own nether regions as if he had just laid an egg. Each time, Taylor sprinted away in exuberant celebration: it is hard to put a price on such moments but each of these lifted his team, more important even than any runs he may have scored.
He has not been feeling well for a couple of weeks and now investigations have shown him to be suffering from arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy , a rare congenital heart condition that is treatable but not curable, and for which he will undergo surgery. A prognosis, though, precludes him playing cricket for a living again, indeed any strenuous activity.
It is a desperate thing for a young man in his prime who has been devoted to bettering himself, overcoming setbacks and knock-backs that would test the resolve of lesser characters to bounce back with renewed vigour and optimism. Maybe he can consider himself fortunate that diagnosis has given him a lifeline: it is 27 years since we lost Wilf Slack , a much-loved Middlesex and England cricketer, to a heart condition that, despite warnings, was never fully diagnosed.
He will get immense sympathy but, more important, the best medical treatment and psychological help, the latter not to be discounted, for it is not being over-dramatic to suggest that the loss of a career at such an age is akin to a bereavement. This summer will be an agony for him.
Taylor has always seemed to carry the mantle of promising youngster rather than the highest achiever, from when he first played county cricket for Leicestershire as an 18-year-old to his seven-match Test career. A breakthrough always seemed to be just around the corner if only he could hang on to his place, or if only just a little more faith could be shown in him.
Some regarded his lack of inches as a hindrance to the development of his batting, although he is taller than Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar, neither of whom appeared to find this an impediment. Indeed, short players, in my experience, are the best judges of length simply because they have to be. Finding the right length is tricky: generally they cut and pull well, but pitch the ball consequently further up and they drive willingly, too.
If there was any flaw in his batting at first-class level, and hence international, it came not from his lack of height but a marked tendency for his bottom hand to kick in and try to work the ball across the line to the leg side, even from off stump. Batsmen at the highest level who play like this (there is a difference between hitting across the line and working the ball to leg with a turn of the wrist) tend to get found out fairly rapidly.
By last winter, it was clear that he had worked hard and to a large extent successfully to eradicate the problem: his runs in the first Test at Durban were an important part of England’s win that set up their ultimate victory in the series. This coming summer, against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, may have been a real opportunity to nail down his Test match place. Or perhaps the last chance.
He has been a ubiquitous white-ball cricketer, too, although 27 ODIs is only starting to scratch the surface and there was the real possibility that although he could pack a punch beyond his weight division the new generation of England thunderbats would leave him in their slipstream. But he made a hundred at Old Trafford against Australia last summer, when he captained the side, and that unbeaten 98 in the defeat to the same team in England’s World Cup opener at the MCG. He might have got a hundred in that game, indeed surely would have, had not a bizarre, blundering umpiring decision ended the match. So near yet so far, a metaphor perhaps for his England career.
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