Pucovski suffered his thumb damage a month in the past on the again finish of his stint in England however he’s on observe to play in Victoria’s Sheffield Defend opener towards Western Australia in Perth.
Pucovski did return to play grade cricket in January 2023 and performed six matches for his Victoria premier cricket membership Melbourne. He additionally performed one 2nd XI match for Victoria towards Tasmania in March late final season.
However there may be trigger for optimism inside Victoria’s camp about his availability this summer time after Pucovski spent the winter turning out for Weybridge Cricket Membership within the Surrey Championship in England. He performed 18 matches for Weybridge and scored 614 runs at 55.82, together with a century and 4 half-centuries. Extra importantly, he managed to play 13 consecutive weekends of cricket with out interruption, which is one thing he has scarcely managed to do in Australia for his membership aspect Melbourne, not to mention for Victoria.
There’s hope he can play near a full summer time for Victoria within the Sheffield Defend, and doubtlessly some Marsh Cup cricket, however it’s understood that Australia’s nationwide selectors want to see him play with out interruption for no less than one full home marketing campaign, if not two, earlier than he’s thought of to return to worldwide cricket.
Since making his debut for Victoria in February 2017, Pucovski has not managed to play a full home season. The closest he has come was the 2019-20 season the place he performed the primary half of the summer time for Victoria, 4 Listing A and 6 Defend matches, earlier than taking an indefinite break in December of that summer time and never returning till the 2020-21 season.
Pucovski first took a break from skilled cricket, unrelated to damage, following his first Defend double-century in October 2018 after which took one other break after being known as as much as the Australia Check squad in February later that summer time for a two-Check sequence towards Sri Lanka. In November 2019, he made himself unavailable for Check choice after taking part in for Australia A.
In October 2021, he was concussed whereas batting within the nets. In February 2022, on return from that concussion, he suffered concussion-like signs within the warm-up throughout a Defend sport towards South Australia and required a break from taking part in however was later cleared of formal concussion from that incident.
After a comparatively easy pre-season final yr, which included a visit to the MRF Academy in India for a coaching camp, he managed solely two Marsh Cup video games and two Defend video games at the beginning of final summer time earlier than taking one other break from the sport.
