Tim Paine confident of being fit in time for Ashes post neck surgery

Australian Test skipper Tim Paine is confident that he will be fit in time for The Ashes series after recently undergoing surgery for his neck. Paine underwent neck surgery in order to fix a pinched nerve that restricted him during pre-season training with Tasmania. The Ashes series will get underway from December 8 with the first match set to be played at Gabba.

Speaking to radio station SEN Tim Paine said, "I ended up having disc replacements on C-6 and C-7, high up in the neck. Basically, they cut a big hole in my throat, move my voice box over to the side and go in that way. It's less invasive than going through the back way, obviously, with your spine, it's the safer way of doing it."

'Recovery a slow process': Time Paine

Informing that his recovery would be a slow process Paine said, "So they take them (damaged discs) out, put the new discs in and stitch it back up. It actually feels really, really good except for the front where I've got the cut. I feel like my range is already better and I've just got to make sure the front, where the cut is, heals and I give the disc time to 'take' to the rest of my spine over the next month or so, and then get moving. It's a pretty slow process if I'm totally honest. I'll be (restricted to) walking for the next couple of weeks and doing a lot of little neck physio-type movements just to try and get the smaller muscles in my neck working again".

With the Ashes series approaching in two months time, Tim Paine revealed that he did not want to leave the neck to be left untreated which would have jeopardized his participation.  He said "I had the bulging disc pressing in on the nerve canal in the spine, so I was having a few issues down the left side of my body. With it pushing hard on the nerves, you can damage the nerves so I didn't want to have any long-term issues with my left arm in particular. I was losing a lot of strength in my left arm, and getting a lot of nerve pain down the back of my arm and I didn't want that to become anything permanent and if I left it too long, I think there's a chance that it could."

The 36-year-old cricketer added, "We were getting to the touch-and-go stage where I either don't get it done and take the risk that I'll be right through the Ashes, or get it fixed now. So the decision came down to a number of things really. The second one was that I want to be playing in the Ashes and playing well, so I didn't want it to sort of come good in a month and then be keep continually flaring up during the Ashes. If it came back as bad as it has been at times, there's no way I would have been able to play if it was the morning of a Test match so I didn't want to take that risk."

Tim Paine has represented Australia as the team's captain in 23 Test matches, winning 11 and losing eight games.