When to Walk Away...

This cricket season has seen a series of retirements from International Cricket. Kane Williamson, Ben Stokes, Tammy Beaumont, Heather Knight, and then, most recently Kate Cross. These are all different circumstances, and different decisions about what exactly they are stepping away from. However, across many sporting retirements there is a key theme: "I have given everything I have to this, and I don't know if I can keep giving it anymore". This particular sentiment has resonated with me personally, as this summer I have made my own decision to step away from a club I have poured an enormous amount of myself into over the last 7 years. Now I'm not retiring from an illustrious international cricket career by any means, but regardless of context, we all confront the notion of "how do I know when to walk away?"

In sport, as in life, we are very good at celebrating perseverance from a young age. Digging in, keeping going, coming back stronger, giving everything to a team, are all frequently spouted phrases that encourage pushing through the tough times. But when we praise perseverance as such a positive thing, then walking away can feel like weakness, or failure. So we often keep going, sometimes because we love it, sometimes because others need us, sometimes because we've already given so much to it, and sometimes because of fear of being the type of person that walks away. However, psychological strength is not only knowing how to keep going and push through, but it's also recognising when the cost of continuing has become greater than what something is giving back to us.

One of the reasons walking away - whatever level we play or work at - can be so challenging, is because of athletic identity. From a sport psychology perspective, athletic identity is the extent to which being an athlete, or cricketer, forms part of our sense of who we are. Ask someone who has played club cricket all their lives to tell you about themselves, and it probably won't take long before cricket comes up. And a strong athletic identity is not inherently bad, as it can provide purpose, belonging, friendships and ongoing motivation. It can enable us to make the sacrifices necessary to pursue something that matters. But it can make walking away all that bit harder. It means that giving up is not just giving up, it means giving up a part of who you are, and that applies far beyond international cricket.

Maybe you've played club cricket for fifteen years and every weekend in the summer revolves around cricket. Perhaps your best friends are your teammates, and perhaps others look up to you or you take on other roles in the club or team. Walking away becomes so much more than wondering how to fill that time, it asks "who am I if I'm not this person anymore?" And sometimes not knowing the answer stops us from walking away. I resonate with this hugely. Truthfully I don't know quite who I am without "running the girls section at Shepherds Bush", but that isn't enough of a reason to keep doing it. And as my own "retirement" is settling in my mind, I can explore who I am beyond that, and where my next steps will take me.

Another useful way of thinking about retirement comes from motivational theory. Self-determination theory separates doing something because we genuinely value and choose it with doing something because we feel controlled or pressured into it. In sport that can become very blurred. You might turn up every week, train, score runs, take wickets and fulfil your role. But why are you doing it? Because you want to? or because the team needs you? or because you feel you should? or because stopping would make the past x years a waste? or because you don't want to disappoint your coach/parents/teammates?

From the outside we just see the behaviour, only you can know your reasons for doing something, but from the inside the motivations can be hugely different. I recognised that in my own decisions this year. For a long time, giving more felt worthwhile. There was satisfaction and purpose in building something, watching girls fall in love with cricket and find a safe space at the club and seeing something grow. Eventually, however, I began to recognise how much of myself I was sacrificing to keep doing it. And the fact that something has mattered enormously doesn't mean you are obliged to keep giving to it forever.

Another key consideration, is there probably isn't a perfect time. We've seen this with Ben Stokes already - "will he be back for the Ashes next year?" - when he is barely out of the door. We love the idea of a perfect sporting retirement. Getting one final hundred, winning a trophy, or an Ashes win. Essentially leaving while you're still good enough that people wish you'd stay. But life is rarely that neat, and interestingly, research into athlete retirement has highlighted how strongly we value the idea of choosing the "right" moment to leave. But waiting for certainty can keep us somewhere long after we know it is time to go. Whenever you walk away you are likely to miss elements of it, you might still love parts of it and you might still be perfectly capable of performing. None of those things mean that it is the wrong decision. And that has been one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile in my own experience. I haven't stopped caring about what I've been a part of, or stopped loving the people involved. And there wasn't a single dramatic moment or discreet factor when everything fell apart. I simply reached a point where I wasn't prepared to keep sacrificing the amount of myself that continuing required - the opportunity cost became too high.

So, how do you know when to stop? Well, there is no magic formula, but, if you're contemplating whether another season is right for you, there are a few questions worth sitting on.

If nobody else had an opinion, would you still choose to do this?

When you picture another season, what do you feel: excitement, curiosity, dread, guilt, obligation?

What is cricket giving your right now and what is it costing you?

Do you actually want to stop playing, or do you want you relationship with the sport/club to change?

If you stopped being "a cricketer", who would you be?

And finally, for those that do choose to walk away, research into sporting transitions increasingly suggest that adapting well isn't about replacing our identity with something new. Instead, we can carry parts of it while making room for other identities, relationships and sources of meaning. You do not have to stop being the person cricket has helped you become, you just don't have to keep giving it everything. So perhaps for some it's not "should I walk away?" but instead "what exactly should I walk away from?"

Maybe you don't want to stop playing cricket, maybe you just want to stop playing three times a week. Maybe you don't want to stop competing, but you want to stop competing at a level that dominates your life. Maybe you don't want to leave your club, but you just don't want to be captain anymore. Maybe you want to play Sunday cricket with friends rather than spending another year chasing selection. There is a huge amount of space between carrying on exactly as I am, and never playing again. Sometimes retirement isn't the end of our relationship with a sport, it's more of a renegotiation.