Shrewsbury drinking nights of future cricket star

Twice a week he would go out with his school pal Jonny Griffiths until the early hours. Going out to bat on a Saturday morning, he would still be "a little spaced out" from his night on the town.

Once he was picked up unconscious in a Shrewsbury street and taken by ambulance to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

On another occasion they were spotted by a teacher emerging from a nightclub at 3am. Suspension loomed - and the errant student and future star could see his spot in the England U-19s side slipping away.

"I was grovelling. Proper grovelling," says Taylor in his newly-published autobiography, Cut Short (Pen & Sword, £20).

"The U-19s World Cup was imminent and no way would the management tolerate me being suspended from school after that kind of behaviour.

"'I won't be able to go,' I pleaded. 'You can't tell anyone.'"

In the end, the youngster escaped with a ticking off and a warning not to do it again.

Taylor's cricketing talent had shone through from a young age and by 2016 he had established himself as one of the country's leading batsmen and an England regular.

But his international career was suddenly brought crashing down when he found himself fighting for his life with a heart problem - it was diagnosed as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, better known as ARVC.

A rare and incurable disease of the heart muscle, it is accelerated by exercise. With playing any more cricket out of the question, Taylor immediately announced his retirement from the game he loved so much.

While this is naturally the running thread throughout the book, it also has fascinating insights into his Shropshire links, which include the Shropshire girl, Jose, who was so steadfast in the bad times and became his bride.

"I didn't know Jose at all at school," writes James. "I knew all the girls in her year, but she never went out... I'd left school by the time I met her. It was November, her birthday, when we first spoke in a club. I was 18, she was 17.

"I had no idea what an integral part of my life she would become. I had met the person who made me complete."

Although James does not use her full name, she was before their marriage Josephine Naylor, and was a pupil at Shrewsbury Girls' High School.

He tells of the moment he proposed, taking her by surprise.

"We set up the picnic in our favourite spot - the exact same place we'd had our first picnic eight years previously as teenagers.

"I had to propose there. Jose loves Shropshire, I love Shropshire, and we both love each other."

Again, James does not detail the location (the Long Mynd maybe?) and says the wedding was a year later in the little church in Jose's village.

Brought up in Leicestershire, he had offers from various public schools, but he chose Shrewsbury School because it was best for football "and according to my parents, there were no girls - I felt this to be a bonus back then."

Shrewsbury, he says, was incredible, with beautiful buildings and vast playing fields, and he encountered a great mentor in former Worcestershire bowler Paul Pridgeon, who became cricket manager at the school.

One of his favourite knocks was at Shrewsbury, aged 15, playing against Harrow in the Lord's Taverners Trophy final at Trent Bridge. Harrow made over 220 in their 40 overs, a massive chase for an under-15 side, especially after the loss of two early wickets.

"Batting with Joe Leach, the current Worcestershire captain, I nudged it closer and closer until we needed 12 an over for the last four overs. I got it down to six off the last two balls and then smashed the penultimate delivery of the game out of Trent Bridge."

In four years at Shrewsbury, Taylor scored over 4,000 runs at an average of 65. He was made captain of cricket, but also played rugby and football. And there were others things too.

"Sport wasn't everything in my life. I made some great friends at Shrewsbury. And then, from the age of 15, there was the drinking. That was when the partying started, and for a while it never stopped...

"We would drink a lot, consistently. Any time we had a spare afternoon, we'd go into pubs in town. They say there are 365 pubs in Shrewsbury, one for every day of the year, which made it slightly annoying for those pupils who got caught by teachers out on pub busts.

"While we were allowed to go into town, clearly the idea wasn't that we'd sit in the pub all day. But there was quite a big drinking culture among the older lads, and I liked it because it was a release - from school, from work, even from the intensity of sport."

Once he signed out of school with his best mate on a pretext and drank all day until late in the night. The last thing he remembered before waking up in hospital was drinking champagne in a club at about 11pm.

The nurses told him he had been found passed out in the street and had been picked up by an ambulance.

He was told he could not leave hospital unless somebody over 18 - like a member of staff - signed him out. He didn't like that idea and simply ran out and back to school.

Taylor writes: "Even after playing for England, I still consider school the best time of my life. No question about it, Maidwell and Shrewsbury set me up forever, and I recognise how privileged I was to go to those places. The freedom to play sport every day was amazing, while the teachers always encouraged me to push myself.

"I'm still in touch with a lot of friends I made there."