Ben Stokes will undergo knee surgery in a bid to prolong his career as a fully functioning seam bowling all rounder.
Stokes has been managing his chronic knee issue for a long time, using rest, rehab and pain killing injections to get him through to this point, but he has finally agreed to go under the knife immediately following England’s exit from the World Cup.
And with a Test tour back to India in mid January, he is hopeful that the procedure and the recovery will all have taken place within a two month window to allow him to lead the side in the five match series.
“There was a lot of time put into deciding when to get it done,” said Stokes. “Obviously there is the India Test series which we start at the end of January, I should be fine to go by then. It’s been a long time coming and obviously I want to get back to what I’ve been doing prior to the 18 months where I’ve had this injury.
“I always go down with the docs and the physios and they use language that I’ve never heard before. There’s obviously something that needs to be operated on. I’ll switch off and let Andy Williams, the surgeon, do what he does best, which is fix knees, and they usually take 5, 6, 7 weeks. I don’t think the surgery is going to have any hindrance on me taking part in the series in India.”
Ever the optimist, and even with Stokes’ famously herculean powers of recovery and fitness, there are no guarantees that this surgical option will be the relatively quick fix the 32-year-old is hoping for. He has spent various time out of action with injuries, and his most recent bout of surgery was on a finger injury that required three operations to get it right.
Stokes might be confident that he will be back in time to face India, but it would be a long shot to expect him to be back bowling as well. That is the ultimate aim though, for Stokes to be somewhere near the all action hero he was in the memorable summer of 2019 when there was nothing he couldn’t do on a cricket field.
“It’s been a big hindrance on me and affected what I can do for the team,” admitted Stokes. “That’s what I want to be doing. You’d hope that it means that I can get back to doing what I’ve been known for, which is playing a role as a batter, and playing a role as a bowler as well."
His focus right now in India though is to try and help his team turn round a disastrous World Cup campaign in which the team have simply been 'crap'. Stokes is one of a number of players who haven't been able to fire when it matters and now have just three games to salvage some pride and enough points to qualify for the Champions Trophy in 2025.
"I think the problem is that we've been crap," added Stokes. "To be honest with you, we've been crap. Everything we've tried throughout this World Cup, through trying to put pressure back onto the opposition in a way in which we know, or trying to soak up the pressure in a different way, which we know we've done before and been successful with, it's just not worked.
"We've been nowhere near good enough to be able to compete in a World Cup, which has been incredibly disappointing because we know we're so, so much better than what we've shown out here.
"If we knew what had gone wrong, we would have been able to fix it. But unfortunately, we don't. It's just been one of those tournaments where it's just been a disaster. And there's no point sugarcoating it because it's probably what you're all going to write anyway, and it's true."
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