Stokes, 33, suffered a recurrence of the injury while bowling during England’s third Test against New Zealand in December, having first ruptured his hamstring while batting for Northern Superchargers against Manchester Originals in the Men’s Hundred in August.
That initial injury kept him out of action for two months, meaning he missed England’s home Test series against Sri Lanka. He later admitted that his race to be fit in time for the team’s winter assignments in Pakistan and New Zealand had led him to “exhaust myself physically and wear myself out”.
At the time of his diagnosis, he vowed that he still had “blood, sweat and tears” left to give to the team, ahead of a crucial 12 months, which included a five-Test series against India at home and Australia. Will be included.
Now, he has posted a photo on Instagram in which he is lying in the back seat of a car after his surgery, wearing a large leg brace and propped up by a pillow.
“Bionic Man for a while”, he added in the caption with a laughing emoji, along with the sign-off: “In a while…”.
Stokes had bowled 36.2 overs before his injury in Hamilton, the most he has bowled in a Test since 40 (also against New Zealand) at Trent Bridge in 2022. On the first day of the Test, his 23 overs were the most overs bowled in a single day, divided between spells of eight, eight and seven.
Arriving in England’s domestic summer following successful knee surgery in October 2023, he bowled 49 overs in three Test matches against the West Indies, taking five wickets, taking him to over 200 in his career.
“I’ve got to work a lot harder on the physical side of the job to be able to go out and do my job,” he said before the Hamilton Test, “but I got a chance to bowl a lot of overs during the last two.” game and I am more confident about tackling a lot of spells in a day.
“That’s about as far as I got before I strained my hamstring. I bowled well in the summer, I had a setback but now I’ve recovered from that and I’m not worried about anything happening again. As you get older You think about your body a little more but I work harder because I have to.”
Apart from the Champions Trophy, Stokes has been forced to give up a lucrative £800,000 deal with MI Cape Town in the SA20 starting on Thursday.
Leave a Reply