Joyce recovering well following operation

Sussex batsman Ed Joyce is back in the gym seven weeks after a major hip operation.

But Joyce admits he won’t know if his surgery has been a success until he starts running again in another month.

The 30-year-old opener had an operation to relieve an impingement in his right hip in November. Joyce nursed the problem throughout last summer with painkillers and physio sessions but by the end of the season he was unable to run properly and missed the last two Championship games.

He said: “According to the surgeon the operation was a success, it went exactly how he wanted it to go.

“I had a six-week check-up last week and the surgeon was happy with how it had healed which was quite encouraging and I do feel a lot better but there is a lot of hard work to go.

“It is two weeks since I came off crutches which was the expected time scale and they reckon it is 12 weeks after surgery before I can run again.

“I won’t really know how well it went until I do some proper running and that is at least three or four weeks away.”

In the past few days Joyce has been doing ten-minute low-resistance cycling sessions and core stability work while swimming is also part of his rehabilitation work.

He added: “It is going pretty well and I feel like I am getting there but I still have good days and bad days.”

Joyce enjoyed an outstanding first season with Sussex. He just missed out on 1,000 Championship runs but scored 941 one-day runs including three centuries as Sussex won two trophies and reached their tenth Lord’s final.

He plans to go to Abu Dhabi with his team-mates on March 8 for their two-week pre-season training camp although it could be later in the month before he is able to pick up a bat again.

“That will be interesting,” he added. “I haven’t picked up a bat since the Champions League in India and you could argue with scores of 0 and 21 that I hardly picked one up there!”

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