Derbyshire's Jon Clare on road to health after back surgery

Derbyshire all-rounder Jon Clare hopes to be back early in the 2015 season after undergoing back surgery.

Clare missed almost all of the 2014 campaign with lower back trouble, playing only once with what turned out to be a problem related to a childhood injury.

After extensive testing, Clare went under the knife in London last Monday to resolve the issue and could be ready by the start of May.

“I underwent a successful operation to solve the problem and I’m now looking forward to the future,” Clare told Derbyshire's website.

“It’s been very frustrating; I’ve been tearing my hair out. I’m sure a lot of other people have been as well.

“The problem grew from an old stress fracture when I was 16. All of the stress was going onto one side which is not a great thing to be doing when you’re a bowler.

“I went to London for a nuclear-spect scan and that found all the hotspots of where the stress was, so we finally had a path to go down and sort it out.

“I’m now looking at a four to six-month recovery period. Fingers crossed, I will be fit for late April or early May.

“I have to rest my back over the next three weeks but then I can get in the pool and everything will build up from that. 

“At three months, I will go for a scan to see if the bone graph has healed and everything is fine. Then I can start lifting weights and bowling with tennis balls and just build it up that way.

“It’s been an unbelievably frustrating period for me and my family because nobody knew what was wrong; that was the most frustrating thing. I was really struggling to find any confidence from anywhere.