A DAMP Thursday in the quiet market town of Taunton may not be every sportsman’s idea of the good life, but Marcus Trescothick has a different take on things these days, a fact he is keen to stress in his autobiography, Coming Back to Me, which is published next week.

As he walked off to a standing ovation after a rousing innings of 158 from 186 balls in Somerset’s recent championship match against Surrey, it was hard to square the relaxed figure with the hollow shell who five months earlier had broken down – in his own words, “sobbing and distraught” – in a Heathrow branch of Dixons ahead of the club’s preseason trip to Abu Dhabi. Even more so following a brutal 184 off 112 balls against Gloucestershire in a one-day match yesterday.

Comparisons between then and now are poignant, yet upliftingly so. By becoming the first player in Division One to pass 1,000 championship runs this summer, Trescothick drew another line under a distressing episode during which his depression – for so long called a “stress-related illness” – had at one stage even persuaded him he was going to die. The “black wings” he uses as vivid shorthand to describe his condition may never leave, but this is no longer the man who, during his abbreviated tour of India in early 2006, sensed the thoughts plaguing him “were no longer inanimate. They were things, beings, beasts, bastards, and now they attacked in waves, one after another, each worse than the one before. ‘Oh God. Please, make it stop. Oh God, please make it stop’”.

The Heathrow breakdown persuaded Trescothick to give up hope of a return to international cricket and those close to him say the decision has provided what the psychologists call closure. “It had been weighing him down for a while, but that decision took the uncertainty out of the equation and freed him up to express himself,” says Brian Rose, Somerset’s director of cricket. “He’s so obviously happy being in Somerset and in Taunton and enjoying his cricket. I believe it’s laid the foundations for his success on the field this summer. I think if he stays fit he can go on for another six seasons.”

There were moments when such optimism would have felt blind rather than realistic. Trescothick’s depression, which began during the 2004-05 tour of South Africa when his wife Hayley was unwell back home, was – for the public at least – all the more heartbreaking for being apparently indefinable. In an ill-conceived television interview in April 2006 he said he had come home from India because of a virus. But that merely fuelled the gossip.

Was Hayley suffering postnatal depression? (She was.) Was she having an affair, possibly with Michael Vaughan or Kevin Pietersen? (“I can state categorically those rumours are total fiction,” says Trescothick. “Some stories were laughable, some just plain crazy.”) A sense of guilt had eaten away at Trescothick since he refused to return home early during the tour of Pakistan late in 2005 – first when his father-in-law fell off a ladder, a harrowing episode he witnessed retrospectively online courtesy of CCTV cameras installed in his home; then when Hayley’s grandfather died.

“I cannot believe I managed to persuade myself that cricket was more important than my family,” he writes. “I have carried the guilt with me since. Had I gone home, it is possible the postnatal depression to which Hayley succumbed and the illness that overwhelmed me and ended my career as an England cricketer might have been kept at bay – maybe even for good.” Once in India, the bug he picked up forced him to spend time alone in bed, where his mind ran riot, panic took over and “I was convinced I was dying”. Psychological help arrived and seemed to do the trick – for a while. Trescothick hit a century on his return to the Test side against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in May 2006, but would manage just one more fifty in 11 Test innings before breaking down again near the start of the Ashes tour.

A successful season with Somerset in 2007 encouraged thoughts of a trip to South Africa for the World Twenty20, but the expectations triggered a relapse. However, the knowledge that an outstanding international career is behind him – he averaged 43 in 76 Tests and was arguably England’s best limited-overs batsman until Pietersen – has helped Trescothick enjoy the home comforts of Taunton.

In his book, he also revealed that he sucked sweets to help keep the shine on the ball. Nominated to look after the ball for England in the 2005 Ashes, Trescothick said: “It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball as long as possible and, through trial and error, I finally settled on the best type of spit. I had a go at Murray Mints and they worked a treat.”