‘Raw, unbridled fear’ – James Taylor on the day he learnt of his heart condition

James Taylor has revealed the painful details of the heart condition that forced him into retirement in 2016 at the age of 26.

In an excerpt from his autobiography Cut Short carried by the Daily Telegraph, Taylor writes of the day the symptoms of his condition – later found to be a rare and serious problem called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy – first showed up. It happened during the warm-ups ahead of a routine pre-season match at Cambridge University.

“My chest started to feel tight,” he writes. “Out of nowhere, my heart was really thudding. I thought it might be anxiety, but that usually subsides. This didn't. I turned to my team-mate Brendan Taylor. ‘My ticker's f****d,’ I told him. ‘My ticker's f****d,’.”

Taylor describes in harrowing detail the very real fear of death. “I walked off to the changing rooms. My heart was now going what felt a million miles an hour,” he writes. “I could actually see my chest moving, my skin expanding and contracting, fit to burst. It looked so unnatural. It made me feel sick to see it.

“I was gasping for air, sucking it in. I was feeling so, so sick. I made it into the toilet and stuck my head in the pan, desperately trying to vomit. Nothing would come. Nottinghamshire physio Jon Alty dragged me out. It hadn’t been flushed and was no place for anyone to be putting their face.

“I was trying to tell him about my heart, but I could barely breathe. I just wanted to pass out. That would be a way of escaping it. I really did think I was on the way out.”

Taylor returned to Nottingham, where he curled up on the pavilion floor, and was found there by his mother. He was rushed to the hospital, having been told not to wait for an ambulance, and the expression on the doctors’ faces, Taylor writes, was something he wouldn’t ever forget.

“By 4pm, I was feeling progressively worse and getting pains down my left arm. Looking back, it's obvious – it's the sign of a heart attack. I shouldn't have been alive at that stage. With my body concentrating all it had on my vital organs, my stomach was already giving up.

"The machine (heart monitor) said it was pounding at 265 beats a minute. The doctors looked at one another. Strangely, it’s the little things you notice at a time like that, and the expression on their faces – shock, disbelief – is something I won’t forget.

"When the heart is under stress it releases an enzyme called troponin. Under no stress, the amount of troponin in the blood would be zero. My level was 42,000."

The doctor told Taylor that his heart had been through the equivalent of running six marathons. “My sheer fitness had saved me. Anyone else wouldn't have had a chance.

“The day, my heart, the future – there were so many unanswered questions, so much to deal with. It was the first time I'd ever felt real fear – raw, unbridled fear.”

Since his retirement and recovery, Taylor has made a career in the media, and works with the BBC Radio cricket commentary show Test Match Special.