Ashes 2019: James Pattinson and the long road back to living the dream

Not so long ago Pattinson was contemplating never playing Test cricket again. Now he’s determined to enjoy it

As James Pattinson’s Australian teammates readied themselves in Brisbane for the start of a home Ashes series in 2017, he was holed up in Christchurch. Eight weeks earlier, it looked almost certain he would be joining them after a rampaging six months, first with Victoria and then with Nottinghamshire. But then his friable L4 vertebrae had, yet again, determined otherwise.

From an immobile state in hospital, Pattinson’s recovery continued in a hotel before he could be flown home. On a walk with his wife, he realised he knew exactly where he was: the scene of his most recent Test Match in February 2016, also played on New Zealand’s south island. “It was a weird feeling,” he told The Final Word podcast. “I was saying to Katie, it felt it all sort of ended there.” But it was also Christchurch where the Pattinson story would start again.

During that earlier visit to Hagley Oval, Pattinson was passed fit to turn out despite taking a stress fracture in his fibula into the series. “I was basically playing with a broken leg and then in that Test Match I started to feel my back go as well,” he recalled. “And then to top it off I came back in the second innings, I tore my ab. I remember limping back to fine leg with a torn ab, a stress fracture in my back and a stress fracture in my fibula. At the time, I knew it was my last Test for a while and I just wanted to get it over and done with.”

Pattinson’s recovery that time around was conventional: rest, rehabilitation, physiotherapy and so on. But pressing fast forward to October 2017, there was a bigger decision to make. Would he go under the knife to fuse his spine in the place where it had fractured on four occasions? Could it save his career? The specialist tasked with the job wasn’t so sure.

“The guy in New Zealand initially said, ‘look, I don’t think that I can do much, your back looks like it is too far gone,’” Pattinson recalled. “That was fairly tough news to take and I thought I was going to have maybe a one-day career or play a few T20s and I might not ever get back to First Class cricket. So, there was a fair bit of contemplation over that month and then he said ‘well, if you are willing to take the risk, even if I can make a 15 per cent difference in it, then it might be just what you need to put you on the park.”

It worked. 12 months on, Pattinson was back in Victorian colours playing four-day cricket. Not only did he get through the domestic season, he led his state to Sheffield Shield victory with a merciless spell reminiscent of the 21-year-old on Test debut in 2011 in Brisbane who took a triple-wicket-maiden to rout New Zealand with a second-innings five-for. A trip to England for a second Ashes tour was assured, his return at Birmingham last week a persuasive one.

Contributing to Pattinson’s problems earlier in his career was his own determination to soldier on after detecting during a match that there might be something awry. “Whenever I’ve felt my back go I always tried to push through it in games and it has ended up worse,” he acknowledged. The same applied when coming back to the Test team prematurely, as he did both in Christchurch and in Cape Town in March 2014, breaking down there as well. At Lord's in 2013, his back went after bowling 51 overs at Nottingham a week earlier.

“As a young bloke, it is hard to say no sometimes,” Pattinson continued. “Looking back on those Tests (in South Africa), if I had my time again I would have taken longer at that stage. There is never going to be a perfect way to do things but it is always hard, especially for me when I was one of the top bowlers and there wasn’t really much behind that. So, when you haven’t got a lot behind that and they are always pushing you to play it is hard to say no sometimes and playing Test cricket for Australia, you want to play.”

This realisation has coincided neatly with a change in direction from the Australian camp under Justin Langer and Tim Paine, who have shelved any sense of pecking order for this Ashes series in favour of carefully deploying their group of six quicks across the five Tests. “That’s one of the great thing having so many bowlers around,” Pattinson, left out for Lord’s this week on this basis, said. “If you are a bit sore coming in umming and ahhing, we are in a position now where we can go the other way rather than pushing through. You can see there are plenty of Tests and look at it long-term. For me, that’s a big learning curve.”

Pattinson was excellent in the first Test at Edgbaston (Action Images via Reuters)

Pattinson attributes keeping it together through the trying periods of his recovery to his grounding with friends and family from the outer south-east of Melbourne. “For me cricket has not always been everything,” he said. “I had in my head that if things didn’t go right with cricket, I would move into something else and I was just thankful that I had the chance to play Test cricket.” One of those friends is Peter Siddle, who has served next to Pattinson at club, state and international level. They shared a hug at Edgbaston before once again walking out to bowl together again for Australia.

After all the analysis on how to keep Pattinson fit and firing, now he just runs in and bowls safe in the comfort that, despite all that’s happened, he is still living his dream. “People sit back and say they say that I could have played so many more if I wasn’t injured but I am just grateful for the Tests that I have played and to be back here playing. Sometimes people can look at what you don’t have. The one thing I have learned is not to look too far ahead and at the end of my career, hopefully I have retired at 35 and I have played 50 Test Matches. But, for me right now, it is just about enjoying life while I am still an international cricketer.”