Australian all-rounder Marcus Stoinis on Friday, 21st June, admitted that he initially feared that his maiden World Cup 2019 campaign was over after sustaining a side strain in a match against India.
The paceman picked up the injury while bowling in a World Cup 2019 clash with India on June 9 which Australia lost by 36 runs. However, Stoinis has now recovered from a side strain and was also retained in Australia's World Cup squad for the match against Bangladesh on Thursday, 20th June.
Now, the 29-year-old is a relieved man after contributing with both bat and ball in Australia’s 48-runs win over Bangladesh as the all-rounder finished with crucial figures of 2/54 in his eight overs, and unbeaten 17 runs in his comeback match at World Cup 2019 at Trent Bridge.
After the match against the Tigers, Stoinis admitted that he was afraid of missing the ongoing showpiece event in England and worried whether he will recover in time to take further part in the World Cup.
Stoinis told media, “It’s been exciting, a bit of a roller-coaster but I was a bit down in the dumps when I hurt myself the other day. So again now, I’m really stoked that I’m back. Your mind goes there (that you’re out of World Cup) but once everything had sort of settled, you think everything’s going to be all right. Yet my initial thought when I did it was ‘I’m out of the World Cup’.”
The all-rounder continued, “I spent a lot of time with the physio and the doc and we were doing a few exercises on the side, a lot of icing at night. There’s not too much you can do outside that but you have to get the muscles moving as much as you can. We didn’t put a time on the recovery period. Support staff did a really good job to not overreact and at least gave me a chance. I think to go into this game, this was probably the deadline. But it’s different bowling in the nets, compared to when the adrenaline gets going in the game. So, we weren’t really sure how I’d go today.”
Meanwhile, Stoinis also revealed that how Australia’s assistant coach Ricky Ponting helped him quite a bit during rehabilitation at the nets, “If I could have one person in the world, if I could have picked anyone to coach me with my batting, it would have been Ricky Ponting.”
Stoinis signed off by saying, “He’s an absolute legend, he’s got a lot of knowledge about the game, so we’ve been speaking about the game and where he thinks I can go to the next level with my batting. It’s more of an open discussion, raising points, problem-solving as we go and coming up with different ideas.”
(With Cricketnext Inputs)
