Rob Key interview after suffering mini stroke - 'This wave came over me, I did not know what was going on'

“I passed out when the consultant told me.” Rob Key is describing the shock when he was lying in a hospital bed two weeks ago and told he had suffered a mini stroke.

At 41, Key believed he was in the best shape of his life. “I had been much healthier. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke which I used to do as a player. When playing cricket you are eating out all the time and constantly away from home. I never slept that well with all the stress of cricket and batting. You are forever tired. I had not felt like that for a long time. My stress levels were a lot lower and being in lockdown was probably the healthiest I have ever eaten,” he tells Telegraph Sport.

He has a history of migraines and thought perhaps he was suffering another when he stood up at home and felt unwell. “I’d had a migraine in the morning which is very standard for me. Once every three months I have blurred vision and sometimes tingly fingers in my left side. I slept off the migraine, played golf and had a walk with the kids.

“That night I was played on my X-Box half an hour, stood up and for about 5-10 seconds my vision went. It was a bizarre thing where everything went completely out of focus. We rang 111. They told me to go to hospital.

"All the tests were fine but a consultant on the phone told them to keep me in overnight for an MRI the following day. He was the one who told me the following day I’d had a mini stroke. I passed out. This wave came over me. I did not know what was going on. Up until that point I was ready to go home and continue with my life. But it was a mental shift as soon as that realisation came.”

Key is now taking blood thinners and will have to wear a heart monitor for seven days before going back to see his consultant to learn what caused his illness. It is the anxiety that has been just as bad as the event itself.

“Now I feel fine but I have to be careful until we find out why it happened. I am so aware of my whole body now. Every feeling I have I think ‘what was that? What could that be?’ Every murmur of your body is worrying. As it was when I played cricket, I’m fine when I’m doing something else but when I put my head down on the pillow that is when my mind starts thinking overtime.

"I tried a meditation app to help me sleep. I lasted a minute trying to quieten my mind because I was thinking why have I got a pain in my head? Am I breathing differently?’ That has been the hardest thing. The first week of anxiety was worse than anything else. If I have to take pills for the rest of my life it is not the hardest thing anyone has had to do. It is just having solace in the fact there is something you can do about it and you will be alright.”

Key played 15 Tests for England, retired from cricket in 2015 as one of Kent’s finest ever batsmen and has since forged a career with Sky Sports as a popular pundit able to clearly articulate his thoughts, but always with a sense of humour cutting underneath his analysis.

He does not know yet if he will be allowed to commentate on the behind closed doors matches this summer because of the Covid-19 situation and his recent health problems. “The funny thing is the games will be the safest place to be. If you want to be in a haven from Covid then Test matches here everyone has been tested will be as safe a place as possible.”

The health issues have come just as Key was starting to promote his book, published last month. '‘Oi Key’: Tales of a Journeyman Cricketer' is not an autobiography but observations on playing with and against some of the greats of his era such as Andrew Flintoff, Shane Warne and Rahul Dravid.

It is written in Key’s witty, lugubrious style that we see on television and gives a glimpse of a life in county cricket that has disappeared.

“We all think we love the scandal, gossip and arguments on Twitter, but what people really want is to hear how great people went about their business, what they are like as people and why they were so good so I have tried to give that kind of insight. I didn’t think anyone would want to read a book by me so I never thought of doing it. I did not want to write a book about myself but the one thing I thought was that I played in a great era of cricket and county cricket in particular, and I was fortunate to play with or against the greatest players of the 1990s-2000s generation.

“I knew Fred from a kid. The thing about Fred was people saw the hero who would walk out to bat without his helmet on and the crowd going mad but playing with him you realised he had as many fears and doubts as everyone else. I saw the journey he went on from having a huge amount of self doubt when he thought he could not play.

"I saw him at one of his lowest ebbs playing against us at Canterbury and he looked like he did not know what end of the bat to hold, and then how he got himself sorted out. People think these guys burst on the scene but they don’t, it is three or four years of struggle to get where they want to be. In the end that talent was matched with confidence.

“Steve Waugh was my hero as a young lad. I remember him in the 1989 Ashes with the chewing gum and Gunn and Moore bat. He joined Kent right at the end of his career. Everyone called him Tugga but I thought I would give him respect and call him Steve. I don’t think he likes being called Steve. I think he prefers Stephen or Tugga. Anyway, I batted with him once and remember thinking ‘this is ridiculous. I’m batting with Steve Waugh’. You just watch and learn.

“My views on how you play spin came from Rahul Dravid. We were playing against Shane Warne at Portsmouth in 2001. I was 20-21. I could pick the brains of Dravid about playing Warne. Incredible. To learn from Waugh the way he was so intense when he played but how he could switch on and off. You would get passages of real mediocrity in county cricket but then these times when it replicated international cricket. Dravid v Warne at Portsmouth, you could put that in any game in the world and that would be one of the great contests and I was at the other end for a lot of it. Only a privileged few get to see things like that.”

Key regrets he did not play more for England. He started young and his Test career was over in little more than two years. He was dropped just before the 2005 Ashes series and the door never reopened.

“I was top run scorer against West Indies [in 2004] and was just finding my feet but then I got dropped for the first few Tests in South Africa that winter. I was at the start of a great era for English cricket and the people who came in for me were Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell. It was one of those times when we had a great batting line up.

"I could have scored more runs and I might have had one or two more opportunities but the reality was England did not get a lot wrong in that set up. Then when that one spot came up Alastair Cook came in and then Joe Root. There was this conveyor belt of batsmen who became much better than I was. You wait for your chance but then you have to learn you are not quite good enough.”

The Sky commentary box is a pretty unforgiving place with some great commentators, who have captained England or risen to the top of the game, and after learning the ropes at the “bottom of the pundit ladder”, as Key calls it, working through the night on series between New Zealand and Bangladesh, he is now a major part of the Sky stable at the start of a new rights cycle.

“If you are going to be picked apart by Nass or Ath you have to have a view that stands up to scrutiny. The more I can try and relax and be who I am the better. When you are a captain and coach you can have the greatest ideas in the world but if you can’t communicate them in an effective way then it is pretty redundant. I had guys at Kent if I could not explain what I wanted them to do in 30 seconds it was a waste of time. You would see them glaze over and get bored. I know there won;t be any cords there this summer but I think at the moment we would all take any live sport. I would watch a club game with no crowds.”

‘Oi Key’ by Rob Key is out now at £20 published by White Owl, available from Amazon and all good booksellers