Daniel Bell-Drummond’s Winter Blog

The winter so far has been an extremely quiet one for me! Due to an ankle problem I’ve had for almost 3 years now which has meant I haven’t been able to bowl, I finally had an opportunity to try and put it right, so I decided to have an operation which was on the 8^thOctober. This was the 1^sttime I’d ever had an operation of any sort so I was pretty nervous as you can imagine!

I turned up at the hospital at 6:30am to find out I would have to wait five hours for my operation! It felt like 5 days in all honesty!

I spent most of the time lying in the hospital bed shivering and just praying the operation would be successful.

Finally they called me in for the operation, the nurse injected the anaesthetic into my hand and told me to count to ten, and here I was thinking that this wasn’t going to work… the next thing I saw was a nurse standing by me and my left foot was wrapped in bandaging, so yeah. I think the anaesthetic worked!

I had been given strict orders to keep my foot raised for 2 weeks which turned out to be possibly the most boring time of my life! I spent it watching TV and playing fifa 13, which no one can beat me at I will add!

After a painful two weeks I was now starting rehab with Nimmo and Pete, and I had the pleasure of staying in Charlie Shreck’s flat above Sainsbury’s, so anyone who goes into Sainsbury’s I can see you!

The rehab to start with was challenging, but I was just glad to be active again. Most of it was spent on the new anti-gravity treadmill which has helped me hugely, and I was back walking sooner than predicted.

I started batting 2 weeks ago which was a great relief! Nearly went two months without holding a bat, so I have since been catching up with lost time and pestering the coaches for throw downs!

I am looking to go abroad in the New Year, hopefully to join Billings in Australia for some tough training at the Darren Lehmann Academy. I’m almost back running properly now, so December will be important for my fitness, so I can get fit for Australia, which unfortunately means unlike the rest of you lucky people there won’t be too many Christmas puddings for me!

DBD