Grief & Hope

For 15 years, the Kia Oval was more than just a workplace for Matt Dunn, it was his home, his sanctuary, and the anchor of his professional identity.

“Before that, I was probably quite naive,” Dunn reflected. “I just turned up, did my thing, ran in fast and tried to hurl it down there as fast as I could.”

Florence suffered her first fever, which immediately triggered a seizure. While febrile seizures are relatively common in young children and typically last only a minute or two, Florence’s body reacted differently. Once she had a seizure, she could not come out of it without intensive medical intervention.

Dunn was playing for Surrey when Florence’s first major medical emergency occurred. Coming off the field, he had eight missed calls from his wife, Jess, and five from his mother-in-law. Florence had been rushed into intensive care.

“Every other week we were rushed into hospital. Florence would be pumped full of drugs, seizing for about two to three hours.”

At six-months-old, genetic testing confirmed a diagnosis of dravet syndrome, an extremely rare and severe life-limiting neurological condition. It marked the beginning of a gruelling, two-year battle.

The family lived in a state of reactive crisis. Florence would suffer frequent seizures, requiring immediate hospitalisation for days at a time. The winter months were particularly brutal, where a seizure would be followed by a five-day recovery period to overcome the side effects of the powerful medications.

The couple traded agonising hospital night shifts, with Dunn often spending the night at Florence’s bedside, and on just two hours sleep, would then drive straight to training. During one training session, coach Vikram Solanki pulled him aside, “Dunny, mate, you look tired,” the coach said. Dunn’s response was simple: “Mate, I’m pretty broken.”

Yet, Dunn kept turning up. As a fast bowler, his job required immense physical fitness, rhythm, and consistency. But with no consistency in his training, his confidence began to spiral. He felt like an imposter, operating on ‘absolute autopilot’.

One of Dunn’s regrets from the ordeal was the heavy silence in which he chose to carry it. By his own admission, Dunn was a classic ‘suffering in silence’ character. Around his teammates and the Surrey staff, he maintained a jovial, funny persona, always displaying a warm smile. His wife Jess disliked this coping mechanism, witnessing the stark contrast when he would return home and collapse physically and mentally.

“Don’t wait for that moment when you’re at your worst point, the Cricketers’ Trust are there for whatever you need. I’ve been trying to communicate this to others players, they might be fine now but overnight things can change.”

Dunn was paralysed by a very real, professional fear. Operating on year-to-year contract renewals, he worried that if he revealed the true, overwhelming extent of his family’s domestic crisis, the club would doubt his availability and choose not to renew his contract. He had a mortgage, a wife who had been forced to let her self-employed business dwindle to provide full-time care for Florence, and a young son to support.

“I had the fear because I was like, if I tell Surrey too much about this, they’re going to doubt signing me next year,” Dunn admitted.

This pressure created a double isolation. Not only did Dunn shield from his teammates, but he and Jess also closed themselves off from their own families. They did not want to expose their parents to the extreme stress of Florence’s condition, leaving them on the ‘last edge’ of emotional exhaustion, desperately waiting for a medical miracle or a genetic breakthrough that never came.

In 2022, the fragile structure of their survival mode collapsed. Overnight, Florence passed away at just two-and-a-half-years-old.

The family had recently relocated to be closer to Jess’s mother for support. They had just purchased a house that required extensive renovation, saddling them with a brand-new mortgage. Dunn was in the final year of his Surrey contract, his cricketing career was flagging, his shoulder was failing, and the family’s financial reserves were depleted.

Then, in the very same week they lost Florence, the family discovered Jess was pregnant, but the emotional collision of losing a daughter while preparing for a new life was incredibly difficult to process.

Waking up the morning after Florence died, the reality of the situation hit Dunn with brutal force. He was emotionally spent, financially stretched, and physically broken. He could no longer pretend. He picked up the phone and dialled his close friend and Surrey teammate, Rory Burns.

“Can you just let them know? Can you deal with it?” Dunn asked. He could not speak to anyone else. Burns stepped in immediately, notifying the club and triggering the involvement of the PCA and the Cricketers’ Trust.

When Dunn finally opened up to the Trust’s representatives, the floodgates opened. For the first time, he revealed the full scale of his silent struggle.

The response from the Trust was instantaneous and unconditional. “They stepped in and relieved the largest amount of pressure I had at that point. I spoke to Thomo (Ian Thomas) and TJ (Tom Jones) and I had to go, ‘Look I’m not okay here’, there was loads of stuff I should have told them over the last two years. That phone call meant everything to me,” Dunn explained.

The Trust offered immediate counselling services for Matt and Jess, but perhaps most importantly, they brought a structured financial roadmap to a family that felt completely lost. They assured Dunn that even if his professional cricket career ended, they would protect his family. Those reassuring words allowed Dunn to lay down the immense emotional burden he had carried for years.