Jonathan Trotts book begins in a toilet. Not for him the glamorous surroundings of sun-streaked cricket grounds or open-top buses, instead the symbolic confinement of the smallest room. Unguarded is about how he got there, and how he found his way out. His first page, set after his penultimate Test innings, a three-ball nought in Barbados, is unsparing. As he stares in the bathroom mirror he notes his lined face and chipped teeth: My hair had gone, and somewhere along the way, the fun had too. Batting had become torture.As with KP: The Autobiography, published by Kevin Pietersen on his exit from international cricket, Trotts account is a state-of-mind book. The exhaustion and frustration are fresh on the page. While this adds a certain urgency, I think its a book that Trott will look back on as a snapshot rather than a truly reflective and rounded vision of who he was and what he accomplished.It is far better than Pietersens book, which circled around the same subjects like a tongue on a rough tooth, to the point that it became unreadable, but that circularity of thinking is here. Trotts preoccupations are with how hes perceived, whether that is by his fellow players, by commentators and pundits or by the wider world. Perhaps George Dobell, his excellent collaborator, sensed as much. The decision to include some fairly long contributions gathered from Kevin Pietersen, Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower serve the dual purpose of mitigating Trotts insularity and providing the reassurance that he is not just respected by his peers but held in great affection as a person too. He is a friend to everyone on that divided list.This is a book with the adroit structure of memoir, told in the voice of autobiography. The chapters are thematic, each set in a particular place and time, so we zig-zag from Barbados to Brisbane, touching down in the Cape Town of his childhood and The Oval of his triumphant first Test.Dobell deftly sketches the cricket-obsessed kid with some warm vignettes; the young Trott and his father playing on adjacent pitches, leaning on their bats and smiling at one another; his driven mother laying into his bowling at a school parents v pupils match; the sports shop he grew up in, which left him unable to bear an untidy grip on a bat handle - as a Test player he goes through his team-mates bags and adjusts them while theyre not looking. It darkens as Trott is sent to a sports psychologist when he reacts violently to his first run of bad scores, and by the time of his Test debut, capped by an Ashes century, he is entirely defining himself by the game he plays: It was everything I had ever wanted, and everything I dreamed it would be.England, with Trott as their rock-solid, iron-hard No. 3, climb the mountain to world No. 1. Its a high that lasts until the final of the Champions Trophy in 2013, when the disappointment of that game induces his precipitous fall.Fear is an unexamined, sometimes unacknowledged, subject in cricket and other sports, maybe because to do so implies a lack of courage. That is daft, not least because courage doesnt really exist without fear. But its manifestation in cricket drives at the heart of Trotts book. The professional batsman trains incessantly to resist and repel very fast, short-pitched bowling. They are not afraid of the ball in the same way that a boxer is not afraid of being punched. But like a boxer, damage accumulates, through a fight, through a career, through all of the unseen hours of sparring and training. There comes a moment when the physical skills dip and decline and the emotional energy required to withstand the challenge changes and deepens, and they no longer feel young and indomitable; instead anxiety seeps like water through a ceiling.In Trott and in many batsmen it begins as a kind of impugning of their masculinity. I felt I was being questioned as a man, he writes. I felt my dignity was being stripped away with every short ball I ducked or parried. It was degrading. Trott is confronted by a truly fearsome opponent exactly as he arrives at this moment in his life. Mitchell Johnson hits him on the head with a bouncer during the ODI in Edgbaston in 2013 and the trickle of anxiety becomes a flood. He breaks down on the field before the next game in Southampton and Ashley Giles has to pull him out with a back spasm, an excuse that reinforces Trotts perception that his anxiety is somehow shameful or weak. By the time the contest is transplanted to Brisbane, he is a sitting duck, his technique wrecked by an early movement across the stumps, his concentration disrupted by a headache, the anxiety manifesting now as a desire to crash his opponent out of the attack: normal circumstances have left town… I want to hit it. I want to smash it. I want to prove I can play this stuff.Johnson is the wrecking ball not just for Trott but for the storied team that is falling apart around him: Graeme Swanns elbow has gone, Matt Prior is struggling, Kevin Pietersen too; and their coach, Andy Flower, is responding in the only way he knows, by pushing everyone harder. Trotts account of the disintegration is urgent and moving, his voice and Pietersens harmonising on what went wrong (a minor theme of Unguarded is how clear and true Pietersens vision of England was - and it is expressed far better and more concisely here than in Pietersens own book).Trotts insecurities are deep in the bones of Unguarded. At the times of his greatest anxieties you want to stop reading, put an arm around him and tell him its all going to be okay. As well as the journey in and out of a toilet, he begins a less steady one from a life and a personality defined by being a cricketer to the more rounded years beyond. I hope that he knows he takes many admirers with him, and this raw, sometimes visceral account of a modern sportsmans life will surely bring him more.Unguarded: My Autobiography By Jonathan Trott Sphere, 2016 288 pages, ￡20 Jaylon Smith Cowboys Jersey . U.S. District Judge Lorna G. 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Brandon Morrow allowed five runs on six hits over three innings. He struck out two, walked one and hit a batter. Edwin Encarnacion had a two-out, bases loaded two-RBI double in the third inning. I remember the first time I saw diving.I was at my sisters swim practice at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre and I had wandered down the pool to the diving boards. Watching the divers soon became a routine. I would turn up for my sisters training hoping that the divers were there, too. But, it wasnt until I was watching the finals of the synchronized diving at the 2000 Sydney Olympics with my dad that my parents finally let me join a diving team. I was 10-years-old. At first it was just a fun after-school activity, but it soon became a passion.Shortly after taking up diving, I was accepted into the junior diving program at the Australian Institute of Sport in Brisbane. I accelerated quickly after that, and it wasnt long before I was competing. By 13 I was the national champion and Commonwealth Games silver medallist, and by 16 Id won an Olympic Medal.Over my time as an Australian diver competing at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games, I have grown from a young athlete learning her craft to an experienced diver leading her team into the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.These are just a few lessons Ive learned about myself, diving and growing up in such a competitive landscape.Remain Focused On Your GoalsAt 13-years-old I attended my first national diving championship. It was an important time in my career; I was in a program with three other divers and if you didnt perform you were out.The championship is a bit of a blur now. I was so focused on training, performing and maintaining my spot in the program. But I remember when one of my teammates was dropped, I overheard his mum on pool-deck telling people I should have been kicked out as well. I remember that day so clearly, thinking no, Ive trained so hard for this and Im not going to be kicked out.It was a stressful time. Id constantly been reviewed and analysed in the lead up to the championship and I knew I had to perform to qualify for the Commonwealth Games.Winning the championship was a relief, defeating established Australian stars Chantelle Newbery, an Olympic champion, and Loudy Tourkey, a bronze medal winner at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. I was under so much pressure to perform, and it was that moment that I realised Id made it and I just needed to keep working and keep focused on myself. My coach at the time was so focused on the job. For him it wasnt about me beating people, but me diving well. We trained hard for me to compete well, so he was very focused on my performance.It was an important lesson for me going into the rest of my career, making sure I didnt focus on other people. At the end of the day, and no matter what other people say, you still have to do your dives and so I make sure to focus as much as I can on what Im doing.All About Performance - Expectations Are HighI had my first experience on an international stage at the 2006 Commonwealth Games; I was 14-years-old, and it was an eye-opening experience.I was thrown together with my synchronized diving partner, Alex Croak, a week before the Games. We didnt really know what to expect, so we just thought wed do our best. It was different to anything Id experienced.We won the silver medal and I cant really remember what I was thinking at the time; I just remember being so excited. I dont even remember being nervous. I just remember competing.I never really thought of what I achieved. The mentality of the program, everyone was expected to perform; not just me but the whole team. You dont think about what youve accomplished when the culture iis based so much on performance.dddddddddddd You grew up learning that everything is about performance, so I went in there trying to have fun but knowing I had to perform.It was the same when I won silver at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. I was 16-years-old, and Id had a few more international tournaments under my belt. I won silver again in the synchro, with Briony Cole, and I became the youngest Australian diver to medal at the Olympics. But I didnt really know or focus on that achievement. My time at the Olympics was all about performance. I had to go there and perform; getting a medal, particularly the silver, was what was expected of me, especially with our previous results in the lead up.With all that pressure and the expectations, winning the silver wasnt really a wow moment. It was amazing winning a medal, but I remember having that pressure on me and just thinking that was what was expected of me.You Have To Be Brave To Be A DiverDespite practising simple dives from the 10 metre platform for a long time, I still remember the first time trying a more difficult dive from that height. Id been trained from a young age to be comfortable up there, but still it was really scary trying the difficult dives for the first time.I can remember that day as I was getting to the pool. I could feel the adrenalin building and I was getting pretty nervous to start doing those more technical dives. But once I did it, it was such a great feeling because then I knew that rush.We do all the practice and all the lead up to prepare ourselves, but you never know what youre going to feel like until you go up there. Its the fear of the unknown; you need to have that bravery and willpower to just go for it and not worry about whats going to happen.Being Teammates and Competitors Can Be A Lonely PlaceIts always tough being in a competitive solo sport. People can be very different in the pool and out of the pool.Alex Croak is probably one of the few people in my diving crew who remained friends with me no matter what the results were. But I have found that friendships like Alexs are rarer than people who treat you differently with the results.Its just the nature of sports; its something you learn form a young age that its just how people are in a sporting environment; so you learn to just stay focused on what youre doing. If you make friends, thats a bonus; but at the end of the day youre probably not going to have that many friends.It can be a really lonely place being teammates and competitors. It was especially hard when I was younger. It was really tough. Were all teammates trying to compete in the same environment, and if you dont perform youre out.Youre Not Always Friends On The Olympic TeamIve matured a lot over the years, obviously as a person and through my diving, too.It takes a lot of time to get experience and to start diving consistently; its a real mental thing in competitions. You do all your physical preparations in training but at the end of the day its about whos going to be the toughest mentally, and I think in the last few years I have improved my mental strength.After years of self-doubt, I finally feel more comfortable in myself.Ive had a lot of issues with self-confidence over the years and now I feel so much better on so many different levels, and to be able to pass on this confidence to younger athletes is something Im really proud of. ' ' '