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<\/p>\nThe chances of Mark Wood being fit for the Ashes have been boosted after the England fast bowler revealed he plans to make his return from injury next month in the County Championship.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old has not played for six months, since suffering a knee injury in the Champions Trophy in February. He has not played a Test match for more than a year, but England are hoping that he will be a key part of their attack for the Ashes series, which begins in mid-November.<\/p>\n
Wood remains England\u2019s fastest bowler and although he is unlikely to be able to play in all five of the Tests down under, he is a vital part of their plan to hit Australia with pace \u2014 alongside Jofra Archer, who returned to Test cricket for the first time in four years against India this summer. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wood suffered a knee injury in the Champions Trophy and has not played a Test for more than a year<\/p>\n
MATTHEW LEWIS-ICC\/ICC VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
It was originally the plan for Wood to return to action in the fifth Test of the India series, which was drawn 2-2, but he suffered a setback and is now targeting a return with Durham, who have fixtures against Essex, Worcestershire and Yorkshire in September. Wood has not been named in any of England\u2019s white-ball squads to play against South Africa and Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping to play for Durham as there are a couple of games in September \u2014 so I\u2019ll try to play one or two of those,\u201d Wood told Betfair\u2019s Stick to Cricket podcast. \u201cThe injury is all right. It was 50\/50 whether I was going to make the India Test, but I was bowling at Lord\u2019s and then, the next day, my knee swelled up again so I had it drained and since then it\u2019s just been about taking things easy looking ahead to the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been well looked after and very cautious. That\u2019s the way it\u2019s been. I value it as they have this end game where they want me to get to Australia. But I said to Baz [Brendon] McCullum, I can\u2019t just bowl to a net for four months \u2014 I\u2019ll go insane. There\u2019s a bowling camp in Loughborough in a tent getting acclimatised there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan is for Wood, who has taken 119 wickets at an average of 30.42 for England \u2014 and averages 26.64 in Australia \u2014 to arrive in Perth in an advance party alongside an England Lions squad and some of the other bowlers who won\u2019t be involved in the limited-overs series in New Zealand in late October. England have scheduled only one warm-up game \u2014 against the Lions development side \u2014 before the start of the Ashes on November 21.<\/p>\n
Ben Stokes, the Test captain, is not expected to play any cricket before that warm-up match. He is recovering from a grade-three muscle tear around his right shoulder, suffered during the fourth Test of England\u2019s series against India, and the recovery time is about two months. <\/p>\n
Stokes will want to ensure he can play a full role as an all-rounder in the Ashes series so is likely to be very cautious about rushing any return to playing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chances of Mark Wood being fit for the Ashes have been boosted after the England fast bowler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-98008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}