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When James Taylor describes Grace Road as 'a place that's close to my heart', it's hard not to be taken back to the moment, eight years ago, that changed his life forever.
The terrifying condition that struck at a pre-season match in Cambridge sounds like a theoretical notion from a medical textbook: arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, which in layman's terms affects the beating of the heart.
Yet for Taylor, who had just taken part in England's triumphant Test series in South Africa and was making a name for himself in the one-day team, its consequences were real and devastating.
Overnight, physical exertion was out of the question. At the age of 26, he was – just like that – an ex-cricketer.
It says everything about his sunny outlook that he has since forged a successful career off the field, including coaching roles with England Under-19s and Northamptonshire, and three years as national selector Ed Smith's deputy.
James Taylor batting for England's ODI team against Sri Lanka at the 2015 World Cup
Taylor in hospital after arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy first struck in 2016
And he begins the 2024 season as the new assistant coach at Leicestershire, who 16 years ago gave him his first break as a teenager.
'I'm lucky,' he tells Sportsmail. 'My wife said it to me the other night: I've never pitied myself. The worst thing I could have done is ask 'why me?'
Even now, the details of his brush with death that day in 2016 inspire equal parts awe and horror. By the time he reached hospital in Nottingham, his heart was pumping at 265 beats per minute – almost four and a half per second.
Astonished doctors said most victims would have been rendered unconscious within 10 minutes, but Taylor – one of the fittest cricketers on the circuit – was still wide awake after six hours, despite experiencing a strain on his heart equivalent to running five marathons.
A couple of months later, he was fitted with an internal defibrillator, and reveals almost cheerfully that he will soon require another complex operation to change its batteries.
He sounds happy to be alive, grateful for a second chance in a sport he adores. For a couple of years, though, he was leading a diluted existence, a life skulking in the shadows.
'People just see the outside version: if you're smiley, then you're great. But you can't sleep on your left side because you feel every heartbeat.
'Every time you cross the road, you second-guess what's going to happen if you shuffle a bit quickly. Every time I went up a flight of stairs, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was freezing cold for the first six months because my circulation had been affected.'
And the machinery now inside him, designed to restart his heart if it gets out of rhythm, took some
