James Vince interview: Repeated attacks on my home forced me and my family out

“It looks like they used some kind of metal bar the first time. There were two cars in the drive, and almost all the windows on both of them were smashed in, as well as the windows at the front of the house.”

While the damage to the cars and house were repaired, security cameras and alarms installed. The Vinces lived elsewhere in that period, but with some trepidation they returned home, only for a repeat attack just a few days later. Bizarrely, both attacks happened during Hampshire home matches.

“For the second one, I was actually still awake upstairs,” says Vince. “That meant I was able to get downstairs quite quickly and had more of a sense of what was going on. It obviously wasn’t such a surprise either, because it had happened before. I think they saw the activity in the house and left quickly.

“This time, they used bricks – and the damage wasn’t quite as bad. It was similar though, with windows on the cars and house smashed. We were still up because we’d been at a dinner for my team-mate Chris Wood’s benefit year at the ground. We got home about 11.30pm, and it happened about midnight. We know a bit more about this one, because we have footage from the new security cameras.”

The footage shows a man with a torch – possibly filming – passing bricks over the perimeter wall to another man, who is wearing a hoodie emblazoned with a logo of the brand Gym King on the back (which could provide a key clue to his identity), and has his face covered. He throws the bricks at windows on the house, then the cars, before fleeing.