If Reece Topley started his World Cup in a hurry, shredding Bangladesh’s top order with two wickets in his first over of the tournament, it is entirely understandable. After last year’s T20 World Cup and the IPL, this is the third global tournament he has travelled to in the past year or so, and in neither of the other two has he managed to get to the third over.
Many seamers struggle with injuries, the inevitable result of forcing the body to repeat very unnatural movements at high speed and high frequency, and Topley has endured several. But the two that ended those tournaments were something different: in Brisbane last year he tripped backwards over the boundary padding while warming up for a warm-up game and managed to rupture ligaments in his ankle, and in Bengaluru in March he dived in the field and dislocated a shoulder.
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“I always think there are two categories of injury,” Topley says. “There’s stress fractures, which can be down to management – when you’re employed by someone and they tell you to bowl, you can’t really kick back much. But India and last year at the World Cup, you have to ask yourself what can you do to avoid it? If you’re unprofessional and you get a hamstring injury or whatever, you can look at yourself to blame. But when I trip over the boundary rope, and I basically just run into the floor, what fingers can I point?”
Add to those experiences his involvement at other World Cups – being called into the 2021 T20 squad as an injury replacement midway through the tournament without being used, and playing twice in the 2016 World T20, also in India, when hampered by a shoulder injury that would require an operation – and you get years of frustrated ambition and shattered dreams, and the explosion of joy and relief that followed his success in Dharamsala on Tuesday, a game he ended with four key wickets.
“When I came out here I certainly felt like there was unfinished business with World Cups,” Topley says. “Last year to have the rug pulled out from under my feet at the last minute was very disappointing; in 2016 I was out here and able to play but I had a shoulder issue; and then to watch 2019 from the sidelines because I had back surgery. But I’ve been wrapped up in cotton wool this time and it’s nice to be here. I don’t feel like I’ve scratched the surface with World Cups and the IPL really.”
It took three months to recover from his ankle injury, and his two overs for Royal Challengers Bangalore amounted to his only action in almost six months. “Being injured and not being able to do what you are good at and what you love is awful,” Topley says. “Watching others take your wickets or score your runs is another horrible thing. But you have to ask yourself, what are the choices here? Do you sit around and feel sorry for yourself or do you just crack on and get yourself back to full fitness?”
It feels like a lot of emotion had been invested in getting him to Dharamsala, but despite the added pressure of being the one player brought into a team that had underperformed badly in their opening game he played as if entirely carefree. “I felt like it’s just another ODI to be honest,” he says.
“I think you can get caught up in everything, and building a narrative around it being a must-win,” Topley says. “We have the talent in the changing-room that if we play our best game we’re on the right end of that result nine times out of 10. It was more about relaxing and everyone just doing their thing.”
England moved on Wednesday to Delhi, where they play Afghanistan on Sunday, with Topley still intent on making up for lost time – starting by playing in each of his team’s seven remaining group games. “There’s a lot of chat about the schedule,” he says. “It’s one game every five days – it’s three training days between each game, and you don’t have to turn up to some of them. We’ve all played county cricket, which can be quite a torrid time – this is 70 overs max, and that’s a walk in the park really.”
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