Knightmare: But the only way is onward after Heather’s “ooh nasty” year

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Heather Knight’s year began with an Ashes defeat in which England lost every match. It then progressed to losing the captaincy, after which she utterly knackered one of her legs. Never mind taking a step forwards, a sidestep would have been nice. (Not that she’d have been capable with that hammy.)

Some wondered whether Knight would continue in international cricket after losing the captaincy. At 34, she’s an age where retirement wouldn’t seem silly. She didn’t want to retire though – and fair enough. She’s still young enough that she can recover from serious injuries in double-quick time, after all.

Heather Knight’s slightly odd reaction to failing to reclaim the Ashes

Knight returned to the England side earlier this month after coming a cropper against the West Indies in May.

“That was a pretty awful day to be honest. I felt my hamstring rip off. That was not that fun.”

Eesh. Despite never having torn a hamstring off the bone ourself, we’re not inclined to disagree with that assessment.

Knight suffered a tear in the same leg in 2013, so she’s always been wary. A month before it went this last time, she’d told England’s physios her hammies were in “the best place that they felt for a long time.”

Imagine how deflating that must have been. Being post-captaincy must already have felt like entering the outro of her career (and youth) and now her body had not just let her down, it had done so in a slightly grisly way that seemed designed to make her worry about specific frailties.

Will Charlotte Edwards’ England play well enough to wash away all these meaningless lines in the sand they’ve been making?

Knight opted against surgery because it would have ruled her out of the World Cup. However, that sort of piquant ambitious impatience isn’t necessarily the best mindset for recovering from something like this.

As England Women’s National Lead for Physiotherapy, Angela George, put it to S Sudarshanan of Cricinfo, Knight was always keen to push on, but, “… we were always able to justify our decisions that fundamentally, the body needed to heal and put that part of the tendon back onto the bone.”

Persuasive stuff. You definitely want your tendons affixed to the relevant bones rather than just flapping about in their pointlessly.

Vindication for George on that count, but so too on her assessment that Knight, “would not need an awful lot of game-time to get back to her very best.”

So far in her career, Knight has scored two hundreds in 14 Tests, which is exceptional. She has a T20 hundred to her name as well – a feat that is always remarkable and more so when it completes the triple-format set. Her ODI hundred record is oddly nondescript though. Before today she had only scored two centuries in 153 appearances.

Now it’s three and this one also means England have already qualified for the semi-finals with two group games still to go.

Hamtastic.

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1. Heather Knight’s slightly odd reaction to failing to reclaim the Ashes

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