Australian fast bowler James Pattinson is all set to go through a major back surgery after ruling out of upcoming Ashes series.
Pattinson could travel to New Zealand in search of a good medical cure of his stress fracture, which has interrupted his career several times. He along with Cricket Australia (CA), is in search for a great specialist, who can boost his Test cricket’ hope.
This will be a different procedure as his hip’s affected part will be fixed by screws and wires.
CA’s sports science chief Alex Kountouris said “Stabilise the area … like having a cast on your foot. There’s a few tests we have to do to see if he’s a good candidate. There’s a lot of people in Australia who do this surgery, it’s reasonably common but none of them have included any fast bowlers that have come back to the elite level.”
Stress fracture always turns out a nightmare for Australian bowlers at different times. Also, Pattinson’s woes with this injury have a history as this is his fourth fracture of this kind, that too they all were at the same spot.
“It’s always better to do things without surgery than with surgery because of the inherent risk of any operation. We have some surgical options with James because of the complexity of his case,” said team doctor Richard Saw.
The injury-prone bowler made his Test debut in 2011 and since then he has featured in only 17 Tests, where he picked 70 wickets. He was on fire during this county season and was expected to be a vital cog of Australia’s pace battery but a sudden injury before Bangladesh tour sidelined him. Recently, after almost gaining full fitness, he picked up another back stress blow.
However, Kountouris believes Australian pace attack is loaded with bullets in form of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazelwood and Pat Cummins. Meanwhile, he has some doubts over Cummins health and will monitor him closely.
“Our goal is to get them to the first Test and there’s no set goal beyond that. With Pat there’s nothing wrong with him, we just know that in this series if he plays all five Tests he’s doubled the amount of matches he’s played in his Test career. So it’s uncharted territory for him,” concluded Kountouris.
The battle of the urn will begin from November 23 in Brisbane.
