James Pattinson will miss the Ashes
Image courtesy of: Zimbio
Australia pace bowler James Pattinson has been ruled out of the Ashes and may have to do some serious thinking about his international future after he aggravated a previous stress fracture in his back.
Pattinson represented Nottinghamshire in the recent English county season and also played for Australia in their Champions Trophy warm-up games.
However, after featuring in the Royal London One-Day Cup final against Surrey, which Nottinghamshire won, Pattinson began to complain of pain in his back.
As a result, Pattinson was sidelined for Australia’s recent trip of Bangladesh and their ongoing limited overs tour of India.
“Soon after returning from the UK, following the Champions Trophy and his county cricket contract, James presented with back pain,” Alex Kountouris, Cricket Australia’s head of sports science, was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. “We made the decision to withdraw him from the Tour of Bangladesh and monitor his pain. He returned to bowling after a period of rest and unfortunately he is still experiencing pain with bowling.
“During this time we have been monitoring him, including regular scans and recent imaging has confirmed that James has begun to re-aggravate his previous lower back stress fracture. As such, he has discontinued bowling as part of his recovery which unfortunately means that he will be unavailable for the beginning of the Sheffield Shield and subsequently Ashes campaign.”
While there is a lot of planning that needs to be done about Pattinson’s bowling and his future, Kountouris believes that the 27-year-old can continue playing competitive cricket.
“Whilst this is very disappointing that James has re-aggravated this old injury, we are confident that he can recover from this and return to playing,” Kountouris said. “However, James’ current injury is complex because his history of old stress fractures from his teenage years means there is one part of his spine that absorbs more force than it would normally do.
“This is the area of the current re-aggravation but we are hopeful that we can put strategies in place to help manage this when James returns to playing.”
Pattinson admitted that he is gutted to have sustained another injury setback so close to the highly-anticipated Ashes series against England, but added that he will take all the necessary steps to try and ensure he doesn’t find himself in a similar position in the future.
“Obviously I am extremely disappointed with this setback after just getting back into a good run of playing cricket,” he said. “I’m especially disappointed to miss out on the possibility to play in a home Ashes series. Over the next few weeks I will discuss all available options available to me with medical staff, to work out the best plan to prevent this from happening again.”