‘My heart was started in front of hundreds of people!’: Former England cricketer James Taylor on his brush with death, having a defibrillator… and giving back to the county game

WWhen James Taylor describes Grace Road as “a place close to my heart,” it’s hard not to be taken back to the moment, eight years ago, that changed his life forever.

The terrifying condition that unfolded during a pre-season match in Cambridge sounds like a theoretical concept from a medical textbook: arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, which in layman’s terms affects the heart rate.

But for Taylor, who had just taken part in England’s triumphant Test series in South Africa and made a name for himself in the one-day team, the consequences were real and devastating.

There was no physical exertion overnight. At the age of 26, he was – just like that – an ex-cricketer.

It says everything about his sunny outlook that he has since forged a successful career off the field, including coaching roles at England Under-19s and Northamptonshire, and three years as deputy to national selector Ed Smith.

And he starts the 2024 season as the new assistant coach at Leicestershire, who gave him his first break as a teenager 16 years ago.

“I’m lucky,” he told Sportsmail. ‘My wife said to me the other day: I have never felt sorry for myself. The worst thing I could have done was ask, “Why me?”

Even now, the details of his brush with death that day in 2016 inspire both awe and horror. By the time he reached hospital in Nottingham, his heart was beating at 265 beats per minute – almost four and a half per second.

Surprised doctors said most victims would have fallen unconscious within ten minutes, but Taylor – one of the strongest cricketers on the circuit – was still wide awake after six hours, despite putting a strain on his heart comparable to running five marathons .

A few months later he was fitted with an internal defibrillator and almost gleefully reveals that he will soon need another complex operation to replace the batteries.

He sounds happy to be alive, grateful for a second chance in a sport he loves. But for a few years he led a watered-down existence, a life that hid in the shadows.

‘People only see the outside: if you are cheerful, then you are great. But you can’t sleep on your left side because you feel every heartbeat.

‘Every time you cross the road you wonder what will happen if you shuffle a little quickly. Every time I went up a flight of stairs I thought I was going to have a heart attack. For the first six months I was freezing because my circulation was affected.’

And the machinery inside him now, designed to restart his heart if it goes out of rhythm, took some getting used to.

Once, in Antigua, the defibrillator went off after responding with a ball pump – Taylor’s “scariest moment” yet.

On another occasion, he felt stressed after arriving late to give a talk at Grace Road. When he took the stage, his heart rate was 130 beats. It soon reached 300, triggering the mechanism.

“My heart was restarted in front of a few hundred people,” he says. ‘You also heard it in the microphone: imagine the sound. Even now, when I hear a loud bang, it takes me back to that time.”

So how did a fitness junkie adapt to a life where adrenaline and excitement can be fatal? The answer was golf, which gave him several hours of non-strenuous exercise. He has also started doing 5km Parkruns, where he pushes his two-year-old daughter in a pram and ‘shuffles around in ’27 or 28 minutes’.

Many joggers without heart disease or with a small child in tow would be happy with such a time.

“My biggest challenge is that I have to slow down if I want to go faster,” he says. ‘If it goes above 100, things can get out of hand. So I just relax.”

Taylor’s equanimity is remarkable. ‘I enjoyed learning about my new body. I’ve always thought about what I can do, not about what I can’t do. The last eight years have been pretty scary at times, but I’ve loved it. It sounds crazy.

‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done: mentally I’ve been as good as gold, and that should never be the case when something turns your world upside down. All I’ve ever done in my life is exercise and run around. And now I can’t. I think you’re a different cat if you can deal with that.’

Taylor now wants to use his perspective to help Leicestershire’s cricketers, who are starting the summer on a high after winning the 50-over Metro Bank One-Day Cup in September and pushing for promotion in the county championship.

Above all, he wants to be a ‘mentor’.

And he has plenty of experience to draw on from his playing days, most infamously when he was belittled by Kevin Pietersen after joining him for 147 runs on his Test debut against South Africa at Headingley in 2012.

“His father was a jockey,” Pietersen said of the 6-foot-2 Taylor, “and James was built for the same job. We faced the fiercest attack in world cricket. I didn’t think he was ready.”

In response, Taylor boasted a daily average of 53, a figure surpassed only by Michael Bevan, AB de Villiers and Cheteshwar Pujara upon his retirement.

“In your career you develop coping mechanisms,” he says. “You don’t get as many runs as you would like, you drop a catch, or someone says you’re not as good as you might think. Everything I have learned from cricket has put me in a good position to deal with this.

“I don’t regret it much because it’s a dangerous place to look back and say, ‘What if?’ Don’t get me wrong, I would have played a lot more games for England and earned a lot more money. But I see it as an opportunity to learn. It really helped that my head turned in that direction. We move on and we look ahead.’

Another metaphor seems inevitable: despite everything, it is a story to warm the heart.