After picking up a horrific leg injury while playing golf last year, England batter Jonny Bairstow wondered if he would ever be able to walk again let alone make a comeback to cricket.

Bairstow had sustained a lower limb injury in a freak accident in September 2023. As a result, he missed the T20 World Cup 2022 and the subsequent away Test tours of Pakistan and New Zealand.

The injury saw the 33-year-old break his fibula in three places, which needed a complex surgical intervention.

The surgery and rehabilitation kept him out of action and on Wednesday (May 17), Bairstow was named in the England squad for the one-off Test against Ireland next month.

“You wonder whether or not you’ll be able to walk again, jog again, run again, play cricket again. Absolutely, those things do go through your mind.

“It depends how long you think about them. There are many different things, until you get back to playing, well… you wonder, is it going to feel the same?” he was quoted as saying by ‘ESPNcricinfo’.

He might never “100 per cent” recover from the injury but Bairstow is willing to adapt his body.

“It’s quite funny, people have said, ‘You’re limping’. Well, I don’t know anyone that’s had a major lower leg injury that does walk exactly the same as previously.

“There are going to be little limps, there are going to be aches, pains, that’s part and parcel of it. Whether it’s knees, hips, ankles, lower back, whatever it is.

“When there’s trauma, there’s going to be an adaptation to the way that your body moves or your body walks, that’s just part and parcel of it. I’m not going to be running exactly the same as last year, but that’s okay.”

Jonny Bairstow is also confident of performing the role of a wicketkeeper.

“I don’t think it’s different to fielding – when you’re sprinting, changing direction. You’re squatting at the stumps and moving laterally, but you’re not running at 25ks to the boundary.

“So, it’s a different kind of fitness – the old legs and glutes are a bit stiff after that first day in the dirt but it’s part and parcel of it,” he added.

(With PTI Inputs)