England tearaway pacer Mark Wood is at a stage where he has started thinking about life after cricket.
Wood has not played any cricket since the first Ashes Test last year, and several months on, is still nursing a knee injury.
And he is not getting any younger. At the age of 36, he very well knows the end might be near. However, he wants to give it one more go.
“I’ve started thinking about other things, doing podcasts, doing my coaching badges.
“I’ve now started to try and think for the first time about what I should do if this doesn’t go well,” he told the Tailenders podcast.
Talking about what shape his knee is in, Wood, whose Ashes appearance in November had been preceded by no cricket for 15 months on account of an elbow injury followed by knee surgery, said: “It’s six-week blocks, it’s not day by day, it’s specialists and rescans every six weeks. It’s been improving since what I got told had been an explosion in my knee in Australia.
“So every six weeks has been an improvement. I’ve started running now and I’m hoping by the next block it’s in a position where maybe I can start lightly bowling.”
Fantastic but unlucky with injuries
Wood has not had a voluminous career in terms of the number of matches thanks to multiple injuries he has picked up over the years, but he has been full of impact. He was part of the English teams that won the 2019 World Cup at home and the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia. In 2015, he was also part of the Ashes-winning team at home.
To date, he has featured in 38 Tests, 70 ODIs and 38 T20Is, and boasts more than 250 international wickets. At the height of his power, he and Jofra Archer, another threatening prospect, threw some real scare into the opposition teams.
“It’s real slow going with the stage I’m at in my career. It’s quite a fine balance, where if I push this too hard then that could be it,” he explained how careful he has to be with his injury now.
Wood was sorely missed during the 2026 T20 World Cup held in India and Sri Lanka, with the English team bowing out in the semifinals after a narrow defeat to eventual champions India at the Wankhede Stadium.