Jonny Bairstow will find sympathy from England’s WhatsApp chat after his ‘freak golfing injury’
Andrew Miller26-May-2021 • Updated on 02-Sep-2022Cricket has a long and proud tradition of improbable injuries, from Chris Old popping a rib while sneezing, to Trevor Franklin being run over by a luggage trolley at Gatwick Airport. And as Jonny Bairstow braces for a lengthy spell on the sidelines after a “freak golf injury”, he’ll have no shortage of sympathy on the England WhatsApp group, where self-inflicted tales of woe abound…Ben Stokes (March 2014)
Incident: Punched a locker
Archer toured India despite his unusual injury•Getty ImagesSeven years on from one self-inflicted wound, Dr Doug Campbell, a hand and wrist specialist in Leeds, was peering into another. “This is going to sound like an awful conspiracy and I know what’s going to happen on Twitter straight away when I say this,” Ashley Giles, England’s director of cricket, told the BBC. “But it’s true, it’s not a conspiracy.” Yep, back in January 2021, Jofra Archer had been cleaning a tropical fish tank in the bath-tub of his flat at Hove, when it had slipped from his fingers and shattered, leaving fragments of glass embedded in his right middle finger. The injury healed sufficiently for Archer to play in two Tests and five T20Is against India, but when he flew home to undergo further treatment on his troublesome elbow, England seized the chance to clean out the wound, which appeared to have healed fully by the time he was booked back in for elbow surgery in May. That elbow, sadly, has proved more harder to resolve.James Anderson (October 2010)
Incident: Boxing match in Bavarian forest
Sidelined: Three weeksCrawley made it to the Chennai nets at the second attempt, at least•BCCIIt’s not often that the word “socks” is the stand-out detail in an injury update. But it’s surely no coincidence that the ECB chose to highlight Foakes’ woolly-footedness when confirming his dressing-room mishap, given what happened when Zak Crawley was wearing his studs indoors in India three months earlier. On the eve of the first Test at Chennai – and the eve of his 23rd birthday, for that matter – Crawley had been walking out to the nets when he lost his footing on a marble floor that one team insider likened to a “skating rink”. The team had placed towels along most of the route to the door, but evidently not enough of them, and Crawley ended up being ruled out for two Tests after suffering a sprained wrist and joint irritation.Jason Roy (August 2018)
Incident: Bat thrown to floor
Injury: Bat rebound to face
Sidelined: One matchSelf-inflicted cricket fails come in all shapes and sizes•Getty ImagesBat-flinging tantrums are two-a-penny at all levels of cricket – what better target of a workman’s ire than his tool, so to speak? And usually the damage is limited to the implement itself, or at worst, the fixtures and fittings (just ask Matt Prior). But at the Kia Oval in August 2018, Jason Roy surpassed himself in a moment of self-defeating slapstick. Surrey’s hopes of progression in the Vitality Blast were already sliding down the pan when he was done in flight by Hampshire’s Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman and bowled for a first-ball duck. In fury he flung his bat to the floor, only for it to rebound and whack him in the face, ruling him out of their do-or-die final group fixture against Glamorgan. “I’m extremely embarrassed and apologetic to my team-mates and fans for this moment of stupidity,” Roy said in a statement. In the event, his absence mattered not. Rain wrecked the group decider, and both teams were eliminated.This article was first published in May 2021, then updated after Bairstow’s golfing injury
