Will Pucovski makes successful comeback from injury in Melbourne Premier Cricket clash
After 12 months out following a shoulder reconstruction and a 10th concussion, Will Pucovski eased his way back into cricket with an important knock in a Melbourne Premier Cricket clash.
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Parkdale in Melbourne’s southern suburbs was a long way from the SCG on Sunday, but Will Pucovski could not have cared less as he made his long-awaited return to the batting crease.
Pucovski, 23, made 40 for Melbourne in its Premier Cricket clash against Kingston Hawthorn at Walter Galt Reserve in what was his first game since he injured his shoulder playing for Australia against India in last year’s SCG Test.
The right-hander required a shoulder reconstruction and his start to the summer was further delayed by the 10th concussion of his career three months ago.
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The opener’s 68-ball innings came to an end when he slashed a wide delivery to third man where he was caught.
Melbourne chased down Kingston Hawthorn’s 104 for only the loss of Pucovski’s wicket after the match’s start was delayed by three hours because of wet weather.
Pucovski’s opening partner Harry Demattia, 16, caught the eye with an unbeaten 48 off 61 balls in just his second Premier Cricket game.
Inside Pucovski’s return from a 10th sickening concussion
- Sam Landsberger
Will Pucovski can’t throw with his right arm but the concussion-prone kid has put up his hand for the upcoming series in Pakistan as Australia’s batting order suddenly starts to burst with options.
A day after Usman Khawaja – filling in for coronavirus patient Travis Head at the SCG – posted an Ashes century that surely booked his plane ticket for that three-Test tour, it was the 23-year-old Victorian who urged selectors not to forget about him.
It has been exactly 12 months since Pucovski’s Test debut as David Warner’s opening partner and he has not been sighted on a cricket field since.
Pucovski underwent a shoulder reconstruction after a mishap diving in the field at the SCG in that match and has spent the past three months slowly recovering from the 10th sickening concussion of his young career.
Severe headaches shadowed Pucovski for six weeks after that October blow at training and he couldn’t even walk around the block without feeling sick.
But on Saturday the boy wonder will make his return for Melbourne Cricket Club and Pucovski thinks, form permitting, he is almost ready to walk back into the Test dressing room.
“As soon as I’m back playing for Victoria I’m ready to play for Australia,” Pucovski said on Friday.
“I think the Pakistan tour is in March. I can’t see why I wouldn’t be in line to be selected there. But obviously that’s in the selectors’ minds.”
Pucovski was cleared by concussion experts to return to the nets a month ago and he will now play a handful of grade cricket games before the Sheffield Shield season resumes.
He faced tennis balls at first before being allowed to hit underarm cricket balls and then from the flinger and finally facing proper bowlers again.
“It’s taken a while. It’s sort of luck of the draw a bit with concussion, but I know I’m in the best possible position to deal with it as best I can,” he said.
The critical question surrounding Pucovski’s cricketing future is what happens if he gets hit in the head again, given his young brain has already absorbed so many nasty blows?
The man himself said it was a matter of when – not if – but was confident his Test career wouldn’t be bounced out by concussion.
“I’m going to get hit again in my career. It’s just bound to happen,” he said.
“I’ve been getting bounced since I was 18 regularly in any cricket I played. I’m hoping when the day comes that I do get hit I can just keep batting. It will happen again and I know I can bounce back like I’ve bounced back numerous times before.
“There’s no question in my mind that I’ll be able to keep doing that regardless of how many setbacks I get, even though I’m kind of hoping now I get a clear run at it.”
Pucovski would’ve been a dream replacement player for the Covid-riddled Big Bash League, but the red-ball specialist has never featured in the tournament, despite once holding a Melbourne Stars contract, and he has no plans to swap his grade colours for the bright lights after so long out of the game.
“I still can’t really throw properly or anything. It was going to be a tough one walking straight into a BBL game,” he said.
“It’s probably a bit easier to not dive in a club game ... then with 15,000 people in the ground and fireworks and everything.”
The kid, who rarely gets out, has looked at his baggy green a few times over the past 12 months and his father, Jan, still has last year’s Test debut saved on the Foxtel IQ box.
“Now the ultimate focus is on hopefully being a long-term Test player,” Pucovski said.
Bubble boy: The lonely hell of Australia’s 13th man
- Ben Horne
Mitchell Swepson is cricket’s original bubble boy.
Of course, it’s not unusual in the Covid era – but the problem is Swepson is in a bubble within the bubble.
Swepson is an elite professional cricketer on the cusp of making his Test debut, yet because of Covid restrictions has been limited to a grand total of two BBL games and one first-class match since late October.
And it’s not likely to get much better for Swepson before he heads to Pakistan in late February, although Covid allowing – he will be hoping to at least get two Sheffield Shield matches in for Queensland before he tours.
Bio-security and security issues dictate it may be unlikely Australia will get a warm-up game in Pakistan before the three Test series, and yet Swepson is expected to come straight in as a spin twin for Nathan Lyon and bowl his country to victory on debut.
At 28 years of age, Swepson is in the prime of his career, but he more than anyone else in Australian cricket has become a victim of Covid in that it has robbed him of actually playing matches and further developing his game.
“It has been one of the challenges in the Covid pandemic, just how teams have had to carry larger squads and those that are on the periphery of the XI, how we do support them and how they do get competitive match opportunities,” acknowledged CA head of cricket, Ben Oliver.
“That’s something that the selectors are very mindful of over this period. And I guess we’ll look to take every opportunity we can to give Mitch and the other guys who aren’t in the XI the opportunity to play games of cricket.
“It’s a fluid situation, so we’re having to adapt as we go, but it’s something we’re mindful of.
“In the absence of that, obviously he’s in the environment where he’s preparing for international cricket so should he get the opportunity I know everyone has great confidence in his ability and everyone would love to see him pull on the baggy green.”
Cricket Australia would love to send Swepson off to the Brisbane Heat to at least play matches in the BBL right now – albeit T20 isn’t the preparation he needs for Pakistan.
But they can’t.
In Adelaide, if the South Australian Government had pinged Nathan Lyon as a close contact for eating at the same restaurant as Pat Cummins (only eating outside saved Lyon), Swepson would have been debuting in the pink ball Test.
Swepson has to be there in case a Covid mishap brings down Lyon before or during a match – hence why he’s stuck in a no-win situation where he is always close, but not close enough.
Over the course of 2021, Swepson managed just 18 days of cricket out of 365 – as he also travelled to the West Indies, Bangladesh and the World Cup in the UAE only to carry the drinks most of the time.
AUSSIE STAR REVEALS GREATEST FEAR AFTER COVID POSITIVE
Travis Head has spoken about how he feared bringing down teammates – and the Ashes – as it was revealed he may have caught the virus off England.
The Test batsman is set to rejoin the Australian camp in Sydney on Friday after a bizarre week where he tested positive to Covid-19, yet experienced zero symptoms other than going on a rollercoaster of emotions, starting with guilt, anxiety and then ultimately frustration at ‘why me?’
Head was staying on the same hotel floor in Melbourne as some of the positive cases among the England coaching staff, and the best guess of Australian officials is he might have picked the infection up from something as innocuous as pressing the same button on the lift.
The Australian and England team doctors have been praised for instilling the protocols which stopped the threat of a full blown spread between the two camps dead in its tracks, as Head tried to mentally process his bad luck as no different to the frustration of suffering a minor injury – ahead of his looming return for the Ashes finale in Hobart.
“Yeah, it was mixed emotions. Obviously within the 24 hours of getting the test, the first feeling you get is that you might have given it to others or cost other people the opportunity (to play) as well,” Head told News Corp.
“The safety of the team was part of that in my mind in that moment, feeling you’d let everyone down because you’d contracted it.
“But the support staff and the leaders of the group, the coach and Pat (Cummins), everyone was fantastic in the conversations we had in that early (Friday) morning – saying that I was the unlucky one.
“There was anxiety around being stuck back in a hotel and the unknowns because the guys were going (to Sydney) and I didn’t know what I was doing, or where it put me in the series, or where it put me personally, or where it put my health.
“So there was definitely a lot of anxiety around that 24 hours.”
Those fears eased when he woke up the next morning still without any symptoms and another result of PCR tests had confirmed negative results for all his teammates and Australian staff and families.
Even Head’s girlfriend Jess managed to avoid testing positive, as the anguish of missing a Test match when in the midst of the best series of his blossoming Test career was tempered by the good fortune of not feeling sick or passing the virus on – and being available for an immediate return.
“When (teammate Marcus Harris) and I had dinner (two nights before testing positive) we were abiding by the protocols with masks and distance and I think the protocols of the whole team environment shows why I’ve been the only one in the whole camp who has been able to get it. It just shows how good our doctors have been,” said Head.
“I’ve not had anything (symptoms). I wouldn’t have got a test. I only came up positive because we had the four days of the compulsory tests from the 26th to the 30th (of December).
“If we didn’t have them I wouldn’t have tested and I wouldn’t have known. So that’s how I felt over the whole period. I felt completely fine. That’s another thing I’m fortunate of, because I’ve been able to get through this seven days symptom free, which means it’s not going to take away from me getting back with the group on Friday and getting back into training.
“The group is comfortable having me back in (from Friday) and I can be back in with the boys. It’ll be nice to be back in the normal atmosphere and be back in among it.”
Head has been able to keep his training up in his Airbnb isolation and could technically run drinks or come into the Sydney Test as a substitute provided he passes a couple of final rapid antigen tests over Thursday and Friday.
It doesn’t pay to guess how Head came to be struck down by the virus, but the likelihood was it inadvertently came via the infections which had affected the England camp or match referee David Boon.
“I don’t know how I got it. They think I got it in the hotel off one of the England or support staff or the match officials that are positive,” said Head.
“It could have been quite easy as just pressing a button in the lift or getting in the lifts at the wrong time.”
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