West Indies’ woman player Shanel Daley has made her way back to the cricket after fighting clinical depression for the past few years. Daley was at the pick of her cricketing career when she suffered a severe knee injury while playing Australia Women in 2015.
I remember it like yesterday, I was on the boundary fielding, dove for a ball and then I felt something popped in my knee and I immediately knew it was bad.
The left-arm slow bowler took over 73 wickets in one-day internationals and 72 wickets in T20 Internationals before the ill-fated incident. She had to undergo surgery for the same and was never the same player since then.
Post-2017 Women’s World Cup, she began to lose interest in the sport.
Explaining her struggle, she said, “I reached a point where I hated the game, I was forcing myself to play, I didn’t want to do that anymore and I knew something serious was wrong.”
Later, she was diagnosed with clinical depression and started visiting the doctor. “I started to do a couple of sessions with a psychologist here in Jamaica and I was also taking anti-depressants. I went away to the States and spent some time over there. Now I am back home and doing a lot better,” she said.
Recently, she played for St. Ann in the Jamaica Cricket Association Women’s League and with a couple of wickets under her belt along-with a half-century, Daley has once again started enjoying cricket.
Loves all things female cricket