London, March 14 Tearaway England pacer Mark Wood said he is contemplating a future beyond cricket for the first time due to his slow recovery from the knee injury that cut short his Ashes tour in Australia.
Wood, 36, returned to Test cricket in November 2025 after 15 months on the sidelines due to an elbow injury followed by knee surgery. But Wood broke down again during the first Ashes Test – bowling just 11 overs before missing the second match with knee swelling and being ruled out of the tour entirely.
"It's real slow going with the stage I'm at in my career. It's quite a fine balance, where if I push this too hard, then that could be it," said Wood on his recovery on the BBC Tailenders podcast.
Wood has picked 119 wickets in 38 games since making his Test debut in 2015. He was part of the England team winning the 2015 Ashes, the 2019 ODI World Cup and the 2022 T20 World Cup. He also said his recovery is being managed in six-week cycles, with specialists conducting scans at each interval.
"It's six-week blocks; it's not day by day. It's specialists and rescans every six weeks. It's been improving since what I got told had been an explosion in my knee in Australia. So every six weeks has been an improvement. I've started running now, and I'm hoping by the next block it's in a position where maybe I can start lightly bowling."
Wood also regretted not getting county cricket game time before departing for Australia to play in the Ashes. "I tried to get back at certain points, but my knee wasn't quite ready. It's easy in hindsight; even if I was at 80 per cent, then at least the game would have given us an indicator of where I was."
With uncertainty hanging over his playing future, Wood said his thoughts had begun drifting beyond the boundary for the first time. "I've started thinking about other things, doing podcasts and doing my coaching badges. I've now started to try and think for the first time about what I should do if this doesn't go well."
--IANS
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