Australia Test captain Tim Paine is “extremely confident” of being fit in time to lead Australia in the Ashes 2021-22 against England after undergoing invasive neck surgery and hopes to get a couple of games in the Sheffield Shield before the prestigious Test series at home.
Paine had a bulging nerve on the left-hand side, causing him serious pain in his neck and left arm and hampering his ability to train at full intensity – which forced him to undergo surgery ahead of the Ashes.
The 36-year-old had recently disc replacements on his C-6 and C-7 in the neck with the surgeons had to cut a hole in his throat to fix the issue. Now, the skipper is expected to be under recovery for six weeks, as he will rest for two weeks before starting his rehabilitation to ensure he is fit and ready for the first Test of Ashes 2021-22 to be played at the Gabba from December 8 against England.
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Paine told SEN Radio on Friday, September 17: “As soon as this six-week block is over I think I’ll be good to go. I’m 36 years of age, I’ve done plenty of cricket training and I know my game fairly well. I’m pretty confident outside of that six-week time frame that I’d be right to go within a week if I needed to be, so that gives me plenty of time. I obviously won’t be as fit or as strong as I would like to be, but I think if I’m moving freely then I’ll give a good fist of it.”
He also hopes to get in a game in Sheffield Shield before the Ashes series.
He added, “It's two and a half months (until the Ashes), and after that six weeks I’ll get straight into my cricket and I could be ready anywhere from a week to ten days. December 8 is the first Test, and I’m extremely confident I’ll be right to go before then. I’ll hopefully get a Shield game in for Tassie (Tasmania) beforehand, and to be hopefully on the end of a third winning Ashes would be something really special for me and the team.”
On the surgery, Paine said “I ended up having disc replacements on C-6 and C-7, high up in the neck. Basically, they cut a big hole in my throat, move my voice box over to the side and go in that way. I feel like my range is already better and I’ve just got to make sure the front, where the cut is, heals and I give the disc time to ‘take’ to the rest of my spine over the next month or so, and then get moving.”
The wicketkeeper-batsman added, “It’s a pretty slow process if I’m totally honest. I’ll be (restricted to) walking for the next couple of weeks, and doing a lot of little neck physio-type movements just to try and get the smaller muscles in my neck working again.”
The Aussie skipper also revealed that a bulging disk had led to a loss of strength in his left arm. He further noted, “I obviously had a bulging disc pushing on the nerve canal on my spine. I was having a few issues down the left side of my body. I was losing a lot of strength in my left arm, and I was getting a lot of sort of nerve pain down the back of my arm.”
Paine feels undergoing surgery was the right thing to do. He added, “I didn’t want it to become anything permanent and I think if I left it too long I think there’s a chance that it could. The second one is that I wanted to be playing in the Ashes and playing good.”
The skipper concluded, “I didn’t want it to come good in a month and then continually flaring up in the Ashes if it had come back as bad as it had been at times there’s no way I would’ve been able to play if it was the morning of a Test match. I didn’t want to take that risk.”
(With PTI Inputs)
