The bowler rushed home to partner Daniella from a Test match in India when doctors failed to find a heartbeat at 13 weeks.
When James got the call he jumped on the first flight home to be with his wife as she went through the painful experience of miscarriage over several days.
But, once he reached her bedside, she was shocked by the reaction of medics - and the moment is etched in her mind.
"The midwife was asking for James's autograph while I was in the middle of losing our baby," Daniella recounts. "It was deeply inappropriate."
And although they've gone on to have two healthy daughters since - Lola, nine, and eight-year-old Ruby - the pair still live with the devastating loss every day.
"It was life-shattering for us," she says. "James was away in India and I couldn't even call him because he was in the middle of a match."
When he did finally arrive at the hospital, Daniella says: "He was absolutely devastated.
"He was trying to support me through it and be sensitive to me but of course he was going through it too. It's hard for the guys, they don't have the same hormones and you don't know how to expect them to be. I felt for him.
"He didn't know how to handle me in my grief or for him to grieve.
"We talked a lot. He is a really sensitive soul and he was really upset.
"Physically it took me around eight months to recover."
And while many marriages are rocked by miscarriage, Daniella says talking about the baby they lost has brought the couple closer together.
"James was very vocal in expressing pain and grief," she says.
"He was always open. He's a modern man. Men are allowed to be human too."
Of that time James, 36, remembers: "In situations like this, when you're thousands of miles away and a loved one needs you, you feel pretty hopeless as a husband. I wished away every minute of the 10-hour flight.
"What she had to endure, and my absence so far from home, highlighted the downside to being an international sportsperson. That was one of the most painful experiences of my life."
And opening up about life with one of the world's most famous cricket stars, former model Daniella explains: "I was modelling, travelling, living in London but going all over Europe. It was a good life.
"I met James in London in a nightclub in 2004. It was love at first sight."
Daniella admits she knew very little about what life as a cricket WAG would entail.
"He was well known, but not by me," she says. "I wasn't a huge cricket fan but I didn't know who he was. My dad did. I didn't know much about cricket full stop.
"I knew there was something special about him when I met him. He was living up in Manchester and I was in London so we'd travel back and forth and then it progressed. It happened pretty quick.
"We'd been dating less than a year when he popped the question. But we knew we had something special. When you know, you know. I didn't listen to the naysayers."
The pair married in February 2006 in the Lowry Hotel in Manchester.
Speaking to Zoe Clark-Coates, CEO of charity Mariposa Trust, on her Soul Tears programme for TBN UK, Daniella bravely opened up about her heartbreaking experience.
"We'd been married two years or so when we decided to start a family," she says. "At my 12-week scan everything was normal. A week later I had another scan before we were going to go away on holiday.
"Sadly at that scan there was no heartbeat. So I was transferred to hospital and given drugs to take.
"When you first get that news you don't believe it. You think that can't be right, I need a second opinion. It didn't seem real.
"I know 13 weeks isn't very far into a pregnancy but 13 weeks in a pregnancy is a really long time. We'd made plans and our future and all our hopes and dreams came tumbling down."
Daniella's brother died tragically when she was just 16, so she acknowledges it wasn't her first experience of loss. And she says the couple, who live in Hale, Cheshire, struggled through their second and third pregnancies living in fear that it would happen again.
She admits: "I worried about James being away a lot. I worried about being on my own and us grieving alone.
"It did work out fine in the end but I can see how for a lot of couples it's hard, it's hugely traumatic to go through. I was preparing myself for it to happen again.
"I didn't want to be that vulnerable again because I didn't want to be in the position of such shocking pain.
"I wish I'd known it was so common though. As far I was aware it hadn't happened to anyone I knew. I just didn't know so many people went through it."
Daniella grew up on the Isle of Man before moving to Monmouth in Wales when she was 11. She was spotted aged 16 at the Clothes Show Live in Birmingham and joined the models1 agency in London.
She says modelling saved her from going down a bad path after the sudden death of her brother Nick, who was 18 at the time.
"My brother was my idol," she explains. "He had just finished his A-levels when he went out for the evening with some friends and they were all in the car and for some reason he stuck his head out of the window and struck a telegraph pole.
"He went to hospital and was on a life-support machine and they had to make the decision to turn it off because he was brain dead. I didn't believe it at first. At 16 I was very naive and innocent. It will never make sense to me. I started looking through the meaning of life books.
"I didn't want to carry on with my A-levels. At the time I wanted to be a lawyer but I lost my ambition.
"I turned to my friends and partying as a release. There didn't seem to be any support.
"I saw a counsellor once who put me on Prozac after half an hour and I decided that wasn't for me. I was 16 and grieving. I spent years after partying instead."
Poignantly she says she and James have wanted a baby boy in memory of Nick, but the tragic loss of their first baby has meant they've maybe hesitated too long.
"We did think about having more," she adds. "I'd lost a little boy. And I had a brother, so that magnified the grief. I felt like I didn't deserve a boy. We would like to have a little boy.
"If I did get pregnant again I would be happy with either sex. But I don't want to risk that now, I have put it off now and I am perhaps running out of time. I don't know whether we will do that or not.
"I know I have a beautiful family now, beautiful kids. But we constantly deal with the heartbreak. It will always be there."
