{"id":10487,"date":"2026-03-13T23:40:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=10487"},"modified":"2026-03-13T23:40:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:40:35","slug":"mark-wood-injured-england-bowler-improving-but-wont-push-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=10487","title":{"rendered":"Mark Wood: Injured England bowler &#8216;improving&#8217; but won&#8217;t push recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wood has been plagued by injuries during his career &#8211; including multiple knee and elbow operations &#8211; which have robbed England for periods of one of their finest strike bowlers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He spent seven months rehabilitating his knee in order to be fit for the Ashes and lamented not being able to play some games for his county before heading to Australia for the series. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I tried to get back at certain points but my knee wasn&#8217;t quite ready,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s easy in hindsight, even if I was at 80% then at least the game would have given us an indicator of where I was.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was thought to have been close to a return in the home summer, but ultimately did not take the field until England&#8217;s only Ashes warm-up game against the Lions at Lilac Hill in November. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He bowled eight overs but was only cleared to play in the first Test following a hamstring scan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For now, although focused on his recovery, Wood said he has been thinking about life after cricket: &#8220;I&#8217;ve started thinking about other things, doing podcasts, doing my coaching badges.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve now started to try and think for the first time about what I should do if this doesn&#8217;t go well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Wood &#8211; regarded as one of the fastest bowlers to play for England &#8211; has taken 119 wickets in 38 Tests since making his debut in 2015.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was part of the 2015 Ashes-winning side, lifted the 2019 50-over World Cup and won the T20 World Cup in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wood has been plagued by injuries during his career &#8211; including multiple knee and elbow operations &#8211; which have robbed England for periods of one of their finest strike bowlers. He spent seven months rehabilitating his knee in order to be fit for the Ashes and lamented not being able to play some games for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}