Black Caps pace bowler Kyle Jamieson optimistic his back woes are behind him

Sunday, 29 June 2025

‘We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.’

If Kyle Jamieson knows anything about The Six Million Dollar Man, it’d be through repeats on an obscure channel. The 30-year-old first represented his country more than 40 years after the TV series ended.

But the Black Caps pace bowler will be optimistic that the rebuilt version of himself can carry out similar Steve Austin-like feats on the cricket field in the coming years.

There were legitimate fears that when Jamieson was diagnosed with another stress fracture of his back in early 2024 that his career could go the same way as Shane Bond.

Bond took 87 wickets in just 18 tests as he terrorised top-quality opponents with his pace and accuracy, only for his back to be unable to cope with the demands of bowling consistently at 150kmh.

Jamieson wasn’t as quick, but his height (2.03m) combined with pace and movement, proved instantly efficient as he blazed his way into test cricket, capturing 36 wickets in his first six appearances.

He starred in New Zealand’s World Test Championship final victory over India in 2021 in Southampton, having match figures 7-51 - including the dismissals of the talismanic Virat Kohli in both innings.

But his injury woes began the following year, and soon became as lengthy as Jamieson’s ‘levers’ which made him such a handful with the ball.

In June 2022, a 'sharp pain' in his lower back forced him away from the bowling crease in the middle of an over during a test against England at Trent Bridge.

A long recovery period followed, but just as he was set to resume his test career against the same opponents back in New Zealand in early 2023, a suspected recurrence saw him become a late withdrawal from the squad

He underwent surgery and returned in August, but back home later that year, various ailments sidelined him from white-ball internationals.

After taking six wickets in the first match of a two-test series against an understrength South Africa side at Bay Oval, Jamieson was ruled out of the second test in Hamilton, with subsequent scans revealing another back stress fracture.

He cut a forlorn figure when answering media questions about yet another setback, and wandered back to his room at the Novotel Tainui with the countenance of a condemned man.

More than a year on - and following a return to international cricket as an injury replacement for Lockie Ferguson at the Champions Trophy in February - Jamieson feels optimistic about his future.

“It was a big task,” Jamieson told the Sunday Star Times of his latest attempt to return to full fitness - and to stay there.

“We pretty much had to go back to square one. It started off with a big assessment of basically everything where I was at physically, where my body was at, all the plans, programmes, etc.

“We found a fair few things that needed to be addressed and then basically went about trying to rebuild my body from scratch really.

“There were parts of my body that weren't activating like they should have. And, athletes being athletes, we find any way we can or compensate to try and get the job done - which I've been doing for a long stretch of time, but it caught up with me a little bit.”

After all the toll taken, did Jamieson wonder whether his cricketing career might be over before he turned 30?

“Well, yeah, it was a reality I had to face, right?

“My gut feel was that there was a solution here and there's an answer.

“It didn't feel like my body couldn't hack it. I just felt like I didn't have the right things in place.

“I don't know why I felt that way, but I just did.

“And then it was about going about trying to find the people, or find the answers and find the solutions that I thought were out there.”

Jamieson said there was a lot of tedious stuff to start his recovery with, before gradually building into a stage with some movement, then gym work, before eventually getting back “to the cricket stuff”.

He admitted his previous iterations as a top-class athlete fell well short of what they could have been.

“I probably couldn't have been any further from being fit for purpose if I tried.

“I was a long way from being from where I needed to be, which was in a way tough and challenging to hear that, but then at the same time I was pretty glad to have found that because I was staring down the barrel of not too many other options.

“At that point in time, there wasn't a whole lot of options.

“I was kind of sitting there going, well, I mean, everything I've heard up to that point was just basically, doing the same thing again and hoping for a different outcome - which as anyone would know, it's not the smartest way of going about things.

“So we came up with a bit of a game plan and ended up basically outsourcing my whole rehab, so I spent basically half a week in Auckland every week from about the start of April through to December, getting access to the right expertise to kind of get me back on the path.

“There's a lot of tedious stuff to start with, for the first six weeks, and then you kind of just gradually build into the next stage with some movement stuff, some gym stuff, and then eventually back to the cricket stuff.”

Jamieson said as he worked his way through the rehabilitation tasks, he began to believe this time he was on the correct path to solving previous problems.

“I felt like there were a lot of other factors that were contributing to it and, each session, each week I went about the rehab process, probably validated that for me a little bit.

“Whilst I guess nothing was a guarantee across that process, I certainly was growing confident each week that there was definitely some stuff there and I'm going to be OK.

“At the same time, until you get a ball in your hand, until you start running in, it's hard to know because there was a huge amount of stuff I had to address and you just don't know how it's going to stand up as well.

“So you just had to just trust it really and hope for the best.”

Jamieson has also made some technical changes to his action to reduce the load on his spine, and now pays far greater attention to what he’s doing when not playing.

“Everything right from how I prepare and plan, recover, what my schedule looks like, everything looks different now.

“Not in a drastic way, but it's just planned out as opposed to just being a little bit reactive and not too much of a thought process behind it.”

He impressed twice against eventual tournament winners India at the Champions Trophy and took 3-8 from four overs versus Pakistan in Christchurch in March in his first T20 international in 18 months.

Jamieson then headed to play for the Quetta Gladiators in the Pakistan Super League, before returning home when the competition was postponed due to escalating tension on the border between the hosts and India.

He didn’t return on resumption; instead joining the Punjab Kings in the Indian Premier League as a replacement player and took 3-48 in the final as his side was defeated by Royal Challengers Bengaluru by six runs.

“It [bowling] was probably the one part of the whole process that I wasn't too worried about.

“I felt like if I could stay in the park, I felt like the skill part of the game wasn't really my issue.

“It was the physical part, and I felt like as long as I was playing cricket, I felt like I'm going to be good enough to be in the international arena, consistently and long term.

“Obviously with the way things unfolded, I got overseas and re-entered the environment probably a little bit sooner than I expected, but yeah, I felt like I was certainly ready to take on those challenges for sure.

Jamieson is still keen to resume his test career. New Zealand will play three tests at home against the West Indies in December.

“I think all three forms of cricket are on the table,” Jamieson said.

“The thing with me is I think physically I've got no barriers really.

“I think the thing, not just for me, I think it's a relevant conversation for all athletes, but especially for fast bowlers is - how do you manage your schedule and how do you plan for it so you're not just sort of caught on the hop.

“And I think that's probably something we got wrong in the past - it was just very much reactive, and not too much process behind.

“So I think around red-ball cricket, around test cricket, it's zoom out even now and go - where are those windows and then how do we prep for them and just go from there.”

Jamieson will miss the T20 tri-series against the hosts and South Africa, along with the following two-test series, on parental leave. His partner Emma is due to have the couple’s first child while New Zealand will be in Zimbabwe.

He would have been a likely selection for the white-ball squad under new coach Rob Walter as the Black Caps eye the World Cup in India and Sri Lanka early next year.

Walter and selection manager Sam Wells may have opted not to pick Jamieson for the two tests however, given he didn’t play in the Plunket Shield last season for Canterbury after returning during summer.

But the coach and player have already had a conversation about Jamieson’s future - which now looks immeasurably brighter.

Stacking up the stats

In just 19 tests, Jamieson has captured 80 wickets at an average of 19.73, with a Strike Rate of a wicket every 44.4 deliveries.

His best bowling figures are 6-48 in an innings (against Pakistan at Hagley Oval in January 2021) and 11-117 in a match (in the same game).

Jamieson took his 50th test wicket in his ninth match - only five bowlers from the 1900s onwards took fewer tests to reach that mark - but injuries have meant he’s played only three tests since June 2022.

The 30-year-old has made 432 test runs at 19.63, with one half-century; but only has one score more than 20 in his last 17 innings.

Jamieson’s wickets in white-ball cricket have been notably more expensive - in 16 ODIs, he has 17 wickets at 39.47 (Economy Rate 5.17) and in 15 T20Is, 13 wickets at 36.46 (ER 9.05).

In the 2019/20 NZ domestic T20 competition, Jamieson took six wickets for seven runs in his four overs for Canterbury against Auckland - the joint third-best innings figures by a bowler in all T20s.