My Odyssey

Odyssey Camp & Co · The Founder Story

Injury means stop. Pain means go.

My 2026 season, and the question from a mountain that got me through it.

Batting with Parkinson's · Merstham CC and Surrey D40 · The Three Peaks, 2024

The season, honestly

The 2026 season is done, and I'll be honest about what it took.

Twelve innings for Merstham, my club. 260 runs. An average of 26. My first ever half-century, 50 not out. I finished in the best form of the summer: 41 not out, then 49 in the final game, beaten by a yorker with fifty in sight. Top score in our innings. Not one of those runs came easy.

Eight more innings for Surrey, in D40 disability cricket. That was the harder season. My other scores were below ten, and I finished it with 28 not out in the final match, the improvement I'd been chasing all summer arriving right at the end.

I play with Parkinson's.

The hardest job on the field

For Merstham I typically open the batting, though I'll bat at any number my captain needs me. Later in the season I started opening in the top three for Surrey as well. For the body I've got, opening is the hardest job out there. It asks for the quickest hands, the finest coordination, the sharpest footwork, exactly when the ball is newest and the bowlers are freshest. It is exactly when I love to be there, because that is when I have the most control over my symptoms.

My last game for Merstham, it rained on and off all afternoon, we were chasing 280, and I stood at the top of the order and faced 82 deliveries before one finally got through.

Here is the list I take to the crease every time, and it does not get shorter: aggressive tremor, muscle rigidity, minimal dexterity, fatigue, locking up and freezing. Parkinson's takes the dexterity out of my hands, so I changed how I hold the bat, how I time the ball, what I trust. What this season taught me again is simple. You build the mind before you build the body. The body follows the mind, not the other way round. Every net, every walk, every rep, I drill the exact skills the condition is trying to take, so the muscle memory carries me on my worst days.

People started to notice how I play. DSC, a cricket brand whose kit I trust, asked me to become one of their Fearless ambassadors. I said yes because the word fits. Fearless is not the absence of the tremor or the fatigue. It is walking out to open the batting anyway. They back the story. They do not write it.

A night on Scafell Pike

None of this started at a cricket ground. It started on a mountain.

August 2024, the National Three Peaks, Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, Snowdon, inside 24 hours. I'd trained for eight months and raised well over the target, and then, on the evening I was already on the train to the start line, I was told I was excluded. The reason had nothing to do with the mountains. The donations kept coming. The training kept going. My Parkinson's hadn't got the memo, so I decided I hadn't either. I found my own place on the challenge and went with a group who believed in me.

Somewhere on Scafell Pike, in the pitch dark, headtorch on, I told a guide I was done. He asked me one question. "Are you injured, or is it just pain?" It was pain. So I kept going.

Injury means stop. Pain means go. I have not said "I'm done" since.

That question is the one I carry to the crease. Same fight, smaller stage.

What the mountain left me

I didn't finish the Three Peaks the way the rulebook defines finishing. I made calls on the route that were about safety, not defeat, and I stand by every one. But I showed up after being told I couldn't, and I came down with something I hadn't had before. Proof. Proof that a body that shakes and stiffens and needs a bit more time can still get somewhere it was told to stay away from. The disease does not decide what I attempt. It only gets a say in how.

The mountain also became a children's book, for kids who get told their path is harder. The Mountain Didn't Know I Was Different. I never planned that part. I'm glad it exists.

The next one has a bat in it

Saturday 20 February 2027, I'm anchoring Batting Against Parkinson's, a 12-hour charity cricket net marathon in aid of Parkinson's UK. I'm holding it at PowerPlay RH1, the indoor cricket centre in Redhill. Two overs at the top of every hour, for twelve hours, with clubs, juniors and cricket creators keeping the net alive between my turns. Every penny goes straight to Parkinson's UK through JustGiving. Same principle as the mountain and the crease.

If your plan changed too

I'm not telling you to climb a mountain or bat through pain that means something is torn. I'm telling you the one thing the mountain taught me and every innings keeps proving. Your ability is not governed by your disability. It only gets a say in how you go about it. And most of the time, the how is the whole point.

260 runs this summer. Not one of them came easy. Every single one was worth it.

Daryn Potgieter

Founder, Odyssey Camp & Co · Batting with Parkinson's

Ben Nevis · Scafell Pike · Snowdon · 9 to 11 August 2024