Luckless Victorian batter Will Pucovski’s career has come to an end, according to reports.
The 26-year old has endured a brutal run of head knocks throughout his career to cruel his hopes of adding to his sole Test cap.
According to Nine’s Tom Morris, Pucovski has been recommended to retire by a panel of medical experts.
The opener has barely played over the past couple of years and was sidelined again in March when he was struck by a bouncer from Tasmanian fast bowler Riley Meredith.
As first reported by Nine, Cricket Australia and Cricket Victoria are finalising the details of his retirement and a formal announcement is expected later this week.
Pucovski has been absent from pre-season training while taking an extended overseas travel break.
As well as several concussions after being hit in the head while batting, Pucovski has been open about his battles with his mental health as the effects of the stop-start nature of his career have taken a toll.
A junior prodigy, Pucovski made his Sheffield Shield debut in 2017 a day before his 19th birthday, and shot to prominence when he bolted into Australia’s Test squad to face Sri Lanka in January 2019.
He had already become just the second ever Victorian, after the great Dean Jones, to hit a Sheffield Shield double-century against Western Australia at the WACA – he’d finish that innings with a whopping 243 to become the ninth player in the competition’s history to hit a double-ton before turning 21.
However, the early glimpses of the trauma to come were already apparent, with a second concussion in two years dealt by a ball to the head from NSW quick Sean Abbott in a Shield match in March 2018; while just a month after his WACA heroics, Pucovski took an indefinite break from the game citing mental health concerns.
Despite suffering a ninth career concussion while playing for Australia A in December 2020, the Victorian’s staggering form, including a Shield record 486-run partnership for the first wicket with Marcus Harris and becoming the first batter in 23 years to score back-to-back double-centuries in the tournament, saw him make his Test debut in the 2021 New Year’s Test against India.
Scoring 62 and 10, he looked immediately comfortable at the highest level, but his first match would be soured by a serious shoulder injury sustained in the field that required surgery and ruled him out for sixth months.
All up, he played 36 first-class matches for a return of 2350 runs at 45.19 with seven centuries and nine half-centuries from 2017-2024.
In his final match on March 3, he was struck in the head by fast bowler Riley Meredith while batting for Victoria against Tasmania on March 3. He ducked into the delivery and played no further part in the match.
(Photo by Jonathan DiMaggio/Getty Images)
Pucovski had been due to link up with Leicestershire for the opening five rounds of the English county championship, but he pulled out of that deal.
The blow was at least the 11th concussion of Pucovski’s career, with the right-hander left on all fours dry-heaving for several minutes after the impact.
In the previous match he had hit a Sheffield Shield ton against NSW in Sydney to revive hopes that he may be able to get back to the national team.
“I sort of link the mental health stuff back to my first concussion… which was when I was about 15 or 16,” Pucovski said on the Vic State Cricket Podcast earlier this year.
“I have a lot of concussion symptoms that over a seven or eight-year period actually never subsided.
“You just sort of got used to having them in a way. The brain’s pretty amazing and can find ways to adapt.
“I would fail concussion tests in the exact same way every single time, regardless of whether I had been hit in the head, and that was over a seven or eight-year period.”
with AAP
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