England's Rory Burns quits football until cricket playing days are over

Rory Burns has decided to hang up the football boots until his cricket days are done after the ankle injury that scuppered his tour of South Africa and left him battling to return for the start of the English summer.

Burns will be missing from the England squad who depart for Sri Lanka next week and is yet to pick up a bat since the Cape Town training ground kickabout on 2 January that led to his foot rolling outwards, multiple ligaments ruptured and surgery.

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The injury, coming only a year after Jonny Bairstow was similarly hurt in Sri Lanka, not only forced Burns to miss the final three Tests of the 3-1 win but England to react by shelving football as a warm-up altogether. While no official diktat has come from above, a good number of counties are expected to follow suit this season.

For Burns, the layoff came just as he was developing into a dependable source of top-order runs and graft, having followed up a maiden Test century during last year’s Ashes with a second in New Zealand. As such, the 29-year-old has little intention of playing football until retired – be it at training or in the garden – even if England were to lift the ban.

“It’s taken four months out of a career and the stage I had got myself to where I was playing quite nicely,” said Burns, who blamed his studs getting caught in the turf at Newlands as he went to shoot, rather than the challenge from Joe Root.

“It was an avoidable setback and when you get something that’s avoidable like that you probably re-evaluate whether you want to waste your time doing four months in a gym rehabbing or being on a plane to Sri Lanka. So while I am still a professional cricketer I probably won’t play football again.”

Ashley Giles, the director of England cricket, had long been against football but was initially reluctant to change things when taking the job in late 2018 for fear of upsetting World Cup preparations. Trevor Bayliss, the former England coach, was never enamoured but accepted its benefits as a physical workout and team-bonding exercise.

Burns has received some “gentle ribbing” from teammates about the incident – as well as an apology from Root for the challenge – but claims the management’s decision has been widely accepted by players who know it could easily have been one of them left watching from the sidelines.

Not that Burns, just shy of 1,000 Test runs after 15 caps and with 84 in his last innings, was bitter about the batsmen who stepped up in his absence. He said: “Kagiso Rabada and Nortje in South Africa looked pretty tasty at times – I was a little bit disappointed. [Sibley and Crawley doing well] can only be a good thing.

“I know what I need to do. You get judged on your output, so I need to get back for the start of the season, score runs for Surrey, tick all my captaincy boxes there and that will lead to hopefully getting my chance back in the Test arena.”

As a title-winning county captain and a player who reached Test level by churning out first-class runs for Surrey rather via the much vaunted “pathway”, Burns was a shrewd choice to speak to the 52 young players who attended the Professional Cricketers Association rookie camp this week.

His talk to the newly-signed professionals at Edgbaston drew on his own career experiences, learning how to be selective about whose advice to take and staying level in an era of praise and criticism on social media.

“You’re never as good as you think you are when you’re doing well, and you’re never as bad as you think you are when you’re not,” he said. “You’re always somewhere in the middle and you just bounce along. It’s remembering that. Sticking to the fundamentals of what works for you.”

While allocated to London Spirit in The Hundred by dint of his England central contract, Burns is also an example of a cricketer who has honed his game in the longer format. He relishes the battle against the short-ball in particular – a trait he puts down to being the youngest of three brothers growing up – and wants others to follow suit.

Burns added: “In terms of being international standard I probably knew red ball was the way forward. It is more rewarding for me as a person.

“County cricket is a long old season and you need persistence day in day out to produce results for your county, let alone trying to reach the next level.

“I’ve probably got to international cricket a slightly different way to others and that’s something I can echo [to younger players]. Whatever age you are, there is still that hope of playing for your country.”