Ashes 2017: England's Craig Overton battling through the pain barrier to make sure injury doesn't end his tour
The Somerset seamer is desperately hoping his first tour with England won't be cut short by an injury first picked up in Adelaide only to be aggravated in Perth
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Your support makes all the difference.“Battling through the pain was in my nature,” says Craig Overton, and you suspect he is talking about more than a broken rib. The Ashes are gone, gone in three games and around 13 days’ cricket, and the fact that the rookie Overton has been one of England’s stand-out performers makes no odds.
“It’s not about how proud I am as a cricketer,” he says. “It’s about winning games for England. That’s what hurts most at the minute.”
Two kinds of pain, then. Overton is still feeling the hairline fracture to his left rib that threatens to put him out of next week’s Boxing Day Test at Melbourne. It first surfaced in Adelaide, after being hit by a Pat Cummins bouncer, and then resurfaced in Perth when he landed on it diving to his left trying to take a catch off his own bowling.
Shortly after that, he tried to bowl a bouncer. That was when things got really bad. Doctors told him that he risked a punctured lung if he took another blow. And yet, the way he struggled on - bowling 24 overs, fronting up with the bat against Australia’s quick bowlers, putting himself around in the field - probably said quite a lot about Overton as a character. He is the sort of guy who will never back down, even when it would probably be quite a good idea to do so.
“I’ve always been taught to fight through things,” he said. “It was painful, but not too bad that I had to stop. Even though I didn’t bowl that many overs, I could still bowl some that the other boys didn’t have to. That’s why I was making sure I didn't dive too much, because then it could break properly. So I was trying to stay on my knees as much as possible.”
Overton puts his recklessly bravery down to a South-West upbringing and a healthy rivalry with twin brother Jamie. “It was the background at Somerset,” he says. “We’re fighters down there, so that’s the way we play our cricket. Growing up as a kid with Jamie hitting me. It was ‘get on with it’, and you don’t show too much pain.”
It is why, all things considered, Overton is probably not the best person to pronounce on his own fitness to play at Melbourne. “We haven’t ruled him out yet, because he hasn’t ruled himself out,” coach Trevor Bayliss said. “I’m sure he’ll be up to play. For a young bloke, he’s definitely got some fire in the belly.”
Overton admits the decision may ultimately be out of his hands. “Sometimes you have to be reined in a little bit,” he says. “At the minute, there’s quite a lot of swelling in it. We’ll wait and see, but I hope three or four days will help. The draw of playing in that game will be absolutely massive, but you’ve got to be realistic.”
Occasionally, English Ashes catastrophes Down Under have had a silver lining to them, in the shape of a young talent birthed, unearthed, come of age. Nobody is rushing to put Overton in the category of Ben Stokes or Darren Gough just yet, but if he does miss out in Melbourne, it would be a bitter blow for a player who has clearly relished his first stab at Test cricket.
And amid the detritus of England’s 2017-18 Ashes campaign, perhaps, ultimately, some good may come of it.
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