Photo Credit: Western Storm Cricket
First female cricketer to reveal Trust support offers powerful testimony.
Fi Morris stated that the Professional Cricketers’ Trust has “saved her life” as she became the first female professional cricketer to publicly reveal the support she has received from the players’ charity in an emotional interview.
Morris, 28, explained to the Trust that she entered the professional game struggling with depression and anxiety, and these conditions were exacerbated by the pressures that come with life as a professional athlete.
The Berkshire-born cricketer came through the pathway at her native county, also playing for England Academy and England U19 before signing one of the first domestic women’s professional contracts with Western Storm in late 2020.
Since then, PCA member Morris has been one of six fully professional members of the Storm squad, a position where she admits she has felt a huge amount of pressure to perform on a regular basis, which has subsequently led to an increase in her symptoms of poor mental health.
Instead of accepting her situation, Morris used her PCA member status to proactively reach out to the Trust for support, which she has been receiving ever since. Morris is now keen to help others who find themselves in her situation by recounting her own experiences on camera.
Although the PCA has admitted female members since 2011, Morris is the first to have publicly revealed the support she has received from the players’ charity. Morris is one of 68 current playing female PCA members, and recently published stats show that 15 received support from the Trust in 2021 – a figure of almost 25%.
“The Trust has probably saved my life, and that’s not something I’m embarrassed to speak about or embarrassed to admit,” said Morris. “It’s been a massive part of my life, it’s genuinely changed my life and I feel very lucky for that.
“Cricket is my dream job, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for my whole life. I thought it was going to be easy, but with only five or six of us contracted in the squad I’ve felt a lot of pressure on myself to perform. It’s definitely tricky to deal with that sometimes.
“I’ve had jobs in the past where there has not been as much pressure, but with cricket there’s a huge amount of pressure that comes with it, which is something that I’ve had to learn to deal with a lot better.
“My mental health is something that I’ve struggled with for quite a while now, though it’s better now than it has been in the past. I saw the opportunity to get involved with the PCA and the Professional Cricketers’ Trust and I knew it was something I had to have a look at and nip it in the bud.
“I feel like I’m now in an amazing position where I want to help other people, and I want to work with the PCA and the Trust to achieve that. That’s something I can be quite proud of – I’ve come quite a long way and I want to use my experiences to help other people to stop them from getting to the stage that I got to.
“Mental health has never been more important or spoken about more. Now is the time that we really need to drive it, and the more we talk about it, the more we can keep that conversation going and help charities like the Trust. It’s so important – we’ve got to keep driving it forward as much as possible.”
On Sunday 3 April, a group of fundraisers will be taking on the London Landmarks Half Marathon to raise money for the Trust and support individuals like Fi. Find out more and donate to the cause.
If you are a PCA member and you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this article, receive support by calling the Professional Cricketers’ Trust’s dedicated 24-hour Confidential Helpline on 07780 008 877.
The Professional Cricketers’ Trust is the PCA’s registered charity, and supports current and former professional cricketers as well as their immediate families in times of need. Click here to find out more information about the Trust.
Name of Author: Professional Cricketers Association
The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), founded in 1967 by former England fast bowler Fred Rumsey as the Cricketers’ Association, represents past and present first-class cricketers in England and Wales. In the 1970s, the PCA established a standard employment contract and minimum wage for professional cricketers. It also helped create a pension scheme in 1995 and launched the magazine All Out Cricket and the ACE UK Educational Programme in 2002.
