Saqib Mahmood: England bowler on first stages of recovery from serious back injury

Saqib Mahmood took the call no sportsperson wants to take.

"It's bad news..."

A stress fracture of the back - the fast bowler's nightmare, an injury currently plaguing England's stock of seamers.

Having impressed on his long-awaited England Test debut in March, two months ago Mahmood was ruled out for the season.

"I got off the phone and I was sat there on my own crying for about 10 minutes," he says.

"It was that drive home where you literally think about everything."

Mahmood's long comeback journey will be told in a series of articles over the coming months. This is his story, Part One.

Speaking a week after his diagnosis, Mahmood understandably seemed dejected. The 25-year-old's spirits have switched from energised, to frustrated, to downright bored since.

The only exercise he is able to do is walk, or to bend down to pick up a bowl.

In April, Mahmood made his first County Championship appearance of the season for Lancashire against Gloucestershire and took 4-90 across 45 overs as his side claimed an innings victory.

A stiff lower back was put down to the cool, windy weather and early season rustiness.

The reality was worse - much worse.

Mahmood was in "agony" when bowling but desperately wanted to prove his fitness for the upcoming Roses match against Yorkshire and the soon-to-be-announced England Test squad. Initially, he was given the all-clear by doctors

But that scan was revisited.

Then came the call from England's doctor, while Mahmood was watching his Lancashire team-mates play at Headingley.

"The worst bit is when you hear the words 'I am afraid it is bad news'," Mahmood explains in May, the emotion still raw across his face.

"You try and keep your composure. After I put the phone down I was sat there in the dining room on my own just crying my eyes out."

Mahmood packed his kit bag and hugged the Lancashire physio. He spoke to no-one else before driving home alone.

"Everything goes through your head," he says. "I was thinking about when I would be back playing, whether I would be the same bowler, all of the stuff I am going to miss.

"I called my dad. I called my brother and he didn't believe me."

Injuries affect family too.

"When I got home I told my mum," says Mahmood. "She stayed quiet.

"She knows when she goes it makes me go.

"I was sat watching the Lancs game on the live stream and I saw her in the garden, just sat on her own..."

Mahmood admits the next few days were his lowest moments so far - the start of a recovery that is expected to take six months at least.

"I didn't want to speak to anyone," he says. He also struggled to eat.

"I didn't want to stay at home. The news was on the tele as well so I just wanted to get away from it all."

On the day his injury was announced, Mahmood spent the day with one of his best friends in cricket, Lancashire team-mate Luke Wood, Netflix providing the distraction.

"Even when we were trying to chat over coffees I wasn't there," he says. "My head was somewhere else.

"My phone was constantly buzzing and you can't switch off. I left my phone in his kitchen and we just watched Top Boy."

Day-to-day the injury now physically impacts Mahmood less than it did. Sporadic sharp pains are no more, occasional stiffness the only real reminder.

But the physical impact is only half the story.

"I'm very, very bored," Mahmood says in early July. "It is getting more and more frustrating."

The recovery from stress fractures is a long, slow process. To an outsider Mahmood may look fit but for the first eight weeks at least he cannot run, lift heavy items and certainly cannot bowl. He can't even lie on his front.

"I went to buy some paint the other day from B&Q," he says in June.

"At the start I was going to carry five, five-litre cans of paint. I thought I'd carry them all and put them in the car. I got there and was like, 'Hang on.'

"Even when I pulled up outside I said to my brother, 'You are going to have to take these inside.'

"I don't really want to be risking anything to make this first bit any longer. I can't do anything until the stress fracture has healed.

"I could go out and party and do all of these things but it is just going to make that recovery longer."

For a sportsperson used to days in the field and hours in the gym, it is a significant change.

Mahmood said in June he visualises bowling "more and more every day" but for now it's watching Peaky Blinders, The Boys and Stranger Things (twice).

In May he went to Paris for the Champions League final - as a Liverpool fan he left disappointed - and has used the enforced break as a chance to get laser eye surgery.

There are other changes too.

"When I look in the mirror after a shower I have noticed I am starting to lose that definition a little bit," says Mahmood.

In the first few weeks Mahmood relaxed a diet that had been followed with the precision of a Joe Root cover drive.

"I have had milkshakes, fizzy drinks, biscuits, KFC," he says. "Not that I have eaten poorly but I have eaten whatever I felt like.

"The first couple of days after the scan I was under-eating and I didn't feel the need to eat being sat around all day. That was the worst thing that I could have done."

But in recent weeks he has re-focussed, setting out a regime with a nutritionist.

"Little things like that where you see the end goal give you a bit of motivation beforehand," says Mahmood.

The end goal for Mahmood is, of course, regaining his place in the Lancashire and England teams.

His impressive performances in the Caribbean in his first two Tests - he took six wickets against West Indies on flat pitches - were such that, if fit, he would almost certainly have been in England's plans for the first Test of the summer against New Zealand in early June.

Instead, he watched the first Test of England's red-ball revolution under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum from the outside.

It proved too much and he turned off after a day.

"Day one against New Zealand was the first time it hit home for me because I was watching and at the same time thinking, "I could have, and potentially should have, been involved in this"," he says.

"It was just the reality hitting home that I am missing out on all of this.

"It was nice to see England win, having been part of the dressing room and also as a fan, but it was different to how it was in the past."

'Bazball' has not just gripped the public, however. As England reeled off run-chase after run-chase, Mahmood felt a duty to watch.

"I have to because of how differently they are playing the game and how much it is progressing," he says. "I feel like I have to watch it to keep up.

"You just make a note in your head, when you are getting back to fitness, what things you might need to do."

For now Mahmood will have to concentrate on making notes, rather than the real thing. If all goes to plan he will soon be able to start on the long rehab road.

This is just the start.