Former England cricket legend Graeme Swann has revealed the toughness of Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins took him by surprise as he opened up on being made a ‘scapegoat’ at the end of his career
Graeme Swann has labelled Celebrity SAS Who Dares Wins ‘disgusting’ – but admits he loved it. The former cricket legend, 46, was put through his paces on the brutal Channel 4 reality show and revealed it was so much tougher than he ever anticipated.
The Ashes winner might be known for aggressively tearing through batting orders as one of the best off-spin bowlers of his generation. But he admits he was surprised at how “mind-numbingly hard” the intense TV show is.
Graeme exclusively tells the Mirror: “It was way harder than I thought. I honestly thought because it’s television, I thought it’d be a bit watered down for what you see and a bit dramatised. It really isn’t. It is brutal.
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“I think Ben Cohen at one point said to me, this is disgusting. And that is a great adjective. It was disgusting. Like there’s some of those things you have to do and some of the cr*p you have to crawl through and swim through and just put your body through.
“It was way harder than I thought. I’ve got so much respect for those guys, for the actual guys. It was mind-numbingly hard.”
The former Nottinghamshire star admits he signed up for the show to prove to his kids that he is not a quitter following claims he “abandoned” England midway through their 2013 Ashes Tour. He fiercely rejects the claims, but sadly revealed he still gets abused about it to this day.
Explaining how he hit rock bottom at the time, Graeme tells us: “It was injury, unfortunately [that forced him to leave the series and retire]… They [the press] needed a scapegoat so they obliterated me in the press.
“I should never have gone on that tour. I had nerve damage in my elbow, and that was the end of my career. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was good enough [as has been reported]. It’s that I couldn’t feel the ball in my hand.
“When you’re bowling for England and you don’t know where it’s gonna go, that’s not the ideal place. And my hand has never recovered. So, unfortunately, I’ve had to just live with that. But yeah, it was a low moment.”
And he admits it’s an issue that he still struggles with. “I can’t feel these two fingers for 90% of the time, the little ones, and weirdly it’s only when I bowl,” he said.
Opening up further on what happened, Graeme reveals he received a barrage of abuse by supporters saying he had “abandoned ship” and gone home. But in a staunch denial he continues to call out those criticising him, confessing it felt like it was the other way around.
“I was forced to retire and told to go home,” he continues. “The amount of people who just sort of abandoned ship and showed no support whatsoever. It was shocking. It included my employers. The ECB were horrific.
“I was just cast adrift. I didn’t hear from anyone for about two years. I mean it was in the days before anyone really took mental health seriously.
“I was depressed after that Tour. No one ever checked in. It wasn’t until I got started working… And I saw a team England doctor about two years later, and he said, oh, how are you, mate? Is everything all right? That was the first time anyone asked. It shows how far things ae hopefully coming. Because back then, no, you just got absolutely cast adrift.”
Graeme, who shares three kids – Charlotte, Wilfred and Jessica – with wife Sarah, was born in Northamptonshire and went on to become one of the greatest cricketers to play for his country.
The former Nottinghamshire star played in four Ashes series for England, winning three. In a history-making victory, he was part of an iconic win Down Under across Christmas 2010 and New Year 2011.
The sports star has been open about mental health since quitting the sport and is an advocate for better psychological support for players in cricket.
“The biggest advice I can give anyone is to learn to be resilient,” he says. “Society now doesn’t teach resilience. It teaches everyone to be like, everyone’s okay…
“I think it’s good now that mental health is not seen as a stigma anymore, because everyone suffers from it at some point…
“But the very fact that I still get abused every now and again for supposedly abandoning the team shows the mental health issue is being absolutely poo-pooed by people who aren’t playing sport and just thinking they can say what they want and can be absolute a**holes and get away with it.”
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, stream or watch live on Sundays and Mondays at 9pm on Channel 4
Source: Mirror
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