IPL Auction: Cameron Green is gifted, but beware his dodgy back

With the ball in hand, he generates slippery pace, coerces steep bounce with height and release. He nips the ball away from the right-handed batsman; he can bend the ball inwards too, but without the snap of the stock out-swinger. He is versed with new-age white-ball deception too. He has strong, long levers that make six-hitting as simple a task as plucking a flower.

Yet, for all the virtues, he has a habit that could frustrate teams. His penchant for wooing injuries. Just before the limited-over series against at home, he picked up a back injury that ruled him out of the series. He returned for the Ashes, but the start-stop tenor has been a recurring theme of his career. In October 2024, he underwent a surgery after a fifth stress fracture injury in two years. He skipped the six months and abstained from the IPL too. For several months after his return, he played as a specialist batter. He, according to Cricket Australia, has a “unique defect” in the area adjacent to the future that is contributing to the injury. It was later revealed that he had a unique spinal defect (extra bone on the L4 vertebra) that caused friction and pressure on the bones when bowling. It required spinal fusion surgery last year.

Australian cricket’s medical experts have tended to prefer the non-surgical approach to stress fractures. Test captain Pat Cummins was the prime example of this, working through a series of issues as a young bowler before his body matured and strengthened around the age of 25. But in severe cases, as Green’s was in 2024, surgeries are the only solution.

He has suffered multiple back stress fractures in his teenage days, wherein he was primarily a fast bowler. He also suffers from a kidney condition, diagnosed when he was a child. The doctors even said that he might not live beyond 12 years. But he fought on, wanting to be both “Ricky Ponting and Brett Lee.” Resultantly, he strictly follows a kidney-friendly diet. “My parents got told when I was born that I had chronic kidney disease. I’m still trying to learn as much as I can about it,” Green once told Channel 7

“Basically, my kidneys don’t work as well as other people’s and don’t filter the blood very well. So I have got to keep my salt and my protein quite low, which isn’t ideal as a cricketer but around games I can pick that protein intake back up because I spend so much of it out on the ground,” he explained. It has five stages, and he is passing through the second.

The back injury has more to do with workload management. But the recurring injuries have stalled his career from booming fully and establishing as one of the world’s preeminent all-rounders. Instead, it has traced the path of his predecessor Shane Watson, gifted, but one of unfulfilled renown. KKR would hope his injuries stay away during the IPL and fulfills the immense potential he undoubtedly has.