Andrew Strauss: 'When we first heard about Ruth's cancer, I was desperate' Credit: The Telegraph/Jeff Pugh
As the first batsman, Andrew Strauss did the virtue of sublimating his emotions, perfecting body language so deadpan you could rarely tell if he did a century or a duck. But as a father of two, widowed in his 40s, he felt compelled, against his natural impulses, to show his vulnerability. How else to spend the four and a half years since the devastating loss of his wife Ruth to lung cancer? He still sees a bereavement counselor and still reassures his two sons, Sam and Luka, that there is no shame in feeling sad, desperate, or just outraged.
He just wants the topic of death itself not to be so difficult to discuss. «It's still too much of a taboo,» he argues. “Many people feel very uncomfortable not knowing what to say to those who are going through this. They flinch, almost wanting to pretend that nothing is happening. This is absurd, because we will all be touched by death in our lifetime. Grief still seems very hidden to me. And this must change, because otherwise there will be people who are deprived of support or knowledge. You can grieve in your little room, not knowing where to turn.”
Before Ruth died at age 46, four days after Christmas in 2018, she left a note explaining how she wants families facing a terminal diagnosis like hers to be better prepared for the realities of bereavement. “Be good to death,” she said. It was on this instruction that Strauss labored furiously, to the extent that Lord's land, on which he scored five test hundreds, is poised to turn «red for Ruth» on Thursday. Against the backdrop of the blaze of the Ashes, the day is embroidered on the tapestry of England's summer of sports, with spectators, broadcasters and fans dressed in red to raise funds for families grieving over cancer.
The orchestration of the performance, which is now in its fifth year, places a heavy burden on Strauss. “Every time we did it,” he says, “by the end, I was completely exhausted.” He suggests that Ruth will «self-consciously» see that the birthplace of cricket has graced a riot of reds in her honor. He chose red for no more complicated reason than the fact that it was her favorite color. The supporting cast is the best: last year, after a charity match at Wormsley Manor in Buckinghamshire, Ed Sheeran gave an intimate concert on the grounds.
'Red for Ruth' The day became a regular part of Test matches after the death of Ruth Strauss. Photo: Getty Images/Adrian Dennis
“Ed himself has been going through a tough time recently,” Strauss says, referring to the singer's wife, Cherry, who was diagnosed with cancer six months into her pregnancy. «He feels connected to what we're trying to do.»
We sit down in the gleaming office building in the White City, where Strauss sits between board meetings. The former England captain, 46, is one of three men, along with Len Hutton and Mike Brearley, who have led the country to Ashes series wins both home and away. Although this feat earned him a knighthood in 2019, he is aware of the need to earn a living. A veteran of 100 Tests, he spent little time passing on his experience, combining senior positions at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) with the creation of Mindflick, a performance psychology company whose clients include treble-winning Man City.
However, it was for his commitment to the memory of Ruth that he received the most praise. So, even though we're in the middle of Ash summer, with so much cricket to discuss, it seems appropriate to check out how it is first. Strauss, who understands more acutely than others that grief is not a linear progression, is very attentive to this. “When it comes to grief, some of my wisest advice didn’t help much,” he says. “They could think logically about it, but they didn’t know how I felt. However, this is no excuse for people not to ask «How are you?» and don't ask this question twice. “Really, how are you?” I found myself getting a lot of comfort from people willing to go there if I wanted to.»
«Australians tend to be more inquisitive»
He met Ruth in Sydney when he was 21, a couple of months after landing in Australia looking for his first cricket break. It was a chance meeting at Bourbon & Beefsteak, a late-night bar in the city's less-than-healthy King's Cross area, is not a place frequented by the young Strauss, fresh out of Durham University via Radley College. Ruth, a 26-year-old actress from rural Victoria, was the antithesis of his straightforward high school image, yet he was irresistibly drawn to her disdain for authority.
“She had a perfectly rational caution about power,” he explains. “I've always admired people who don't just take things at face value, who say, 'Why? Why should I do this, just because someone told me about it? By nature, I am much more traditional in this regard. But Australians tend to be more inquisitive.”
Strauss often credited Ruth with creating balance in his life, imploring him to view himself not as a cricketer but as a cricketer. So when that sense of balance was shattered one morning in December 2017 by the news that Ruth had terminal ALK-positive small cell lung cancer despite never having touched a cigarette, it was the most heartbreaking cruelty. For some time she suffered from pain, which her doctor confirmed as a symptom of cancer that had spread to her liver and then to her bones.
She answered the call in the middle of the move, reacting with such stoicism that her first words were to ask the tow trucks if they'd like a cup of tea. When I ask Strauss if he was taken aback by her placid response, he thinks for a few seconds. “I knew how Ruth was built,” he says. “When we first heard, I was confused. It was such an incredible shock that I just thought, «I can't believe this is happening to us.» But Ruth's thought, instead of «why me?» was “why not me? This happens to people every day. Why should I be different? I found this surprising because she didn't get mad at how unlucky she was.
“She was very sad that she would not be around to see the boys grow up and because she wanted to achieve so much more in her life. But she agreed, and that allowed her to come up to me and say, «We need to prepare for what's to come.» if I know we're done when I'm gone.»
In 2018, Strauss lost his wife Ruth from — for cancer. Photo: AP Photo/Tom Shaw
Parallels can be drawn here with journalist Deborah James, on whose BBC podcast You, Me and the Big C Strauss participated before her death last June from bowel cancer at age 41. Like Ruth, she had two children, and like Ruth, she made it a point to buy them birthday presents long after she was gone. “Deborah came in one of the Red for Ruth days and she had incredible vitality,” Strauss muses. “She shed light on death. She emphasized the idea that while you are alive, you can still have an impact, right up until your dying day.»
The grace with which Ruth came to terms with her fate left its mark on Strauss. “Our time is limited, and therefore I need to be more conscious of what I do and what I do not do. It could mean that I'm experiencing something I wasn't attracted to before, or giving up on something, even if I don't want to let people down. But above all, it means that the people who matter most to me are happy.”
No one is more meaningful to him than his two boys. The three of them are exceptionally close, and Sam, his eldest son, begins playing county junior cricket. And if there's one inescapable lesson he wants to bequeath to them, it's not how to protect their stumps or get into seductive hiding places, but how to communicate their mental state. Sam and Luka were 13 and 10 years old when their mother died. The process of coming to terms with this is as long as it is difficult.
“They do fantastic things, but a common grief-related mistake is that if people are outwardly functioning, then everything is fine,” says Strauss. “I am very careful about my boys that there will be times when they will be affected. It may not be today or tomorrow, it may be when they go to university or when they get married. I have to be a role model, showing them that it's okay to raise your hand and say you need help.»
«From the beginning, I asked Glenn about how to approach this»
Strauss developed his own coping mechanisms, drawing confidence from reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. “When you experience this huge upheaval in your life, you automatically question everything. You wonder, «What is it all about?» From this book, I came to the conclusion that in my life I focused on achievement, but perhaps not so much on self-realization.
Equally invaluable to him was the advice he received from his sister Sandra, a consultant oncologist specializing in sarcoma. “Interestingly, she felt she learned a lot from Ruth's experience in that patients expect more than just a clinical diagnosis from their doctor. While counselors can't afford to get too emotionally involved, my sister would say she's much more inclined now to encourage families to have difficult conversations.»
There is a kinship that he unearthed through cricket as well. Strauss' «Red for Ruth» was originally inspired by Glenn McGrath's decision, after the loss of his wife Jane to breast cancer in 2008, to designate every New Year's game at the Sydney Cricket Ground as a «pink test». Everything from the stumps to the baggy green caps of Australian players are repainted pink, and Jane's charity has funded hundreds of additional nurses across the country.
Strauss deeply hopes that his efforts for the Ruth Foundation, which defines pre-bereavement care as its niche, can reach the same scale. “From the beginning, I asked Glenn how to approach this,” he says. “They are way ahead of us in getting a lot of government funding. But we deal with them all the time.»
Once upon a time, Strauss's relationship with McGrath was very different, limited solely to working out how to appreciate the ruthless line and length of the great seamer. Back in that memorable 2005 Ashes, he was one of McGrath's casualties at Lords when the Australian took five wickets out of 53. It was a test that England would lose by a gaping margin of 239 runs before setting off a glorious resurgence to win series. . This year, as last week's cold-blooded classic match in Edgbaston showed, the matchup between old foes could hardly be more equal.
Strauss and McGrath team up for cricket. Photo: Getty Images/Hamish Blair
This is the style of the game of the English, their dashing casualness about the dangers that the whole nation is talking about. Strauss can be considered the progenitor of the phenomenon known as «Buzzball», named after Brandon «Buzz» McCallum, head coach of the Kiwis. After all, it was he who appointed Rob Key, the director of cricket, who placed first McCallum and then Ben Stokes, the captain's born pugilist. The transformation was stunning. In 2021, they scored over 400 in just one Test inning. Last winter in Pakistan, one of the busiest destinations for any tour team, they drew over 500 people in a day.
“What they did is no small feat,” Strauss says. “They taught the players a radical approach. At first glance, this is a much higher risk. To be honest, I don't think so. The reason this is so antagonistic to people is because Test cricket has had these self-limiting conventions for over 150 years. But with the skills the players have now, with flat pitches and tired bowlers, you have to beat him. The odds are in your favor.»
While Geoffrey Boycott slammed Bazball's excesses in The Telegraph, calling for a focus on winning over fun, Strauss urges England to stay true to its piratical spirit. “When I played, I thought that it was only about winning. But over time, I realized that it's also about how you play. Fans want to see how teams try, play beautiful rugby, football or cricket, do something innovative and unusual. It's exciting, you don't know what's going to happen. If you can combine that with winning, it really is a magic formula.”
Asked if he would like to be 20 years younger to benefit from this loose approach, Strauss is self-deprecating. “I don’t think I would have made the team,” he smiles. For the past decade, he has contented himself with serving the game as an administrator, leaving his position as the ECB's strategic adviser just last month. He leaves no doubt that this role can disappoint him. “Sometimes we are paralyzed in decision making. I'm worried about how far we can move with the game.»
Clicking on the illustration, he does not hesitate to point to the 100, a shortened league that the ECB has described as a major source of income during the school summer holidays, but which remains negligible in terms of the commercial impact of the Indian Premier League. «Hundred» is a great example. There are so many different agendas, so many people who care about their own interests, instead of thinking about which direction the game is going. Forget about what countries need or what the ECB wants. What does English cricket need?
For now, these existential game puzzles can wait. Strauss' most important task on the Thursday before the Lord's test is to bring Ruth's name back into the public consciousness and tell families separated by cancer that they don't have to endure their torment alone. By his own admission, Strauss still has days when he struggles, when reminders of the tragedy that befell Ruth surface. «It's caused by different things,» he says. “You may have a bad luck, or you may hear a sad story. He is still there. I will be very disappointed if it ever comes to the point that it is not.» Such is the essential comfort of grief: despite all the suffering, he has the comfort of knowing that her death does not have to be the end.
ruthstraussfoundation.com
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