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Olly Stone looks forward to England Test match return three years after career-saving surgery | England vs Sri Lanka 2024

Olly Stone will crown his recovery from career-saving surgery to insert two screws in his back, performed at the hospital next to Lord’s, with a return to St John’s Wood and the England Test team in 2021. He will replace the injured Mark Wood for the second match against Sri Lanka on Thursday after a three-year absence.

Stone, the only change to the side that won at Old Trafford on Saturday, made his Test debut against Ireland at Lord’s in 2019 and only returned to his commitment with the London Spirit at the Hundred this summer. The 30-year-old’s return to the Test side follows an unexpected emergence as a potential all-rounder.

In nine innings for Nottinghamshire in this year’s County Championship he has averaged 35, a huge improvement on the 15.33 and 16.33 he made in his last two first-class summers, and having previously scored a red-ball half-century, this year he has scored three. “I’ve always felt I had something in me,” said Stone. “I was just trying to find a way to be more consistent and maybe I’ve found that this year.”

Stone has played Twenty20 franchise cricket in Australia, Pakistan and South Africa, but a return to the Test team was always his goal. “You could probably try to avoid surgery and see how it goes when you’re not playing cricket,” he said. “I just love the feeling of getting back on your feet after four or five days of a hard-fought win. Sometimes it takes more than just skill, it’s character. That’s something that cricket can’t give you without cricket. I just love the grind of that hard work.”

Since Stone’s last selection in 2021 against New Zealand, 25 players have bowled for England, but he maintained that barring injuries, he was just one run away from selection. “I know my abilities and if I perform, I would be there or around there,” he said.

Olly Stone was the star of The Hundred and global T20 cricket, but always had aspirations of playing Test cricket again. Photo: Bradley Collyer/PA

“This year I’ve been told to go away and get a run of games together and if that works out then hopefully the call will come back. That’s the approach I’m taking, I’m taking it game by game. It’s helped me not to put pressure on myself to go out there and enjoy my cricket.”

Luke Wright, the England coach, said this was “the right time to look to the future” after a number of senior players – including Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow and Chris Jordan – were left out of the squad for the white-ball series against Australia next month. “They are all good cricketers but at the moment we just want to give them other opportunities,” he said.

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Wright said Bairstow, whose two-year contract runs until autumn 2025, had not taken the news well. “When we spoke to him, it wasn’t that he was finished. We just want him to become one of the best players in the world again.”

“He had this terrible injury and that was the message. He understands that. He doesn’t like it and Jonny will fight back – and I hope he does.”

Jos Buttler, England’s white-ball captain, is likely to hand over the wicketkeeping gloves for some of the three T20s and five One-Day Internationals. “It’s something he’s considering,” Wright said. “You have to be in the field and be with the bowlers at times. That could easily happen in this series.”

England’s team for the second test Ben Duckett, Dan Lawrence, Ollie Pope (captain), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jamie Smith (overall), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Matthew Potts, Olly Stone, Shoaib Bashir.

By Bronte

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