aland. Lately, though, all opening batsme | Forum

NEW YORK -- David Wright walked stiffly from the clubhouse to the corridor outside the Mets batting cage, stood in front of a wall, a large white bandage covering the skin just below his Adams apple. Phil McConkey Youth Jersey .I plan on coming back and being the player that I feel like Im capable of being, he said. When this heals, it should be as good as new.New Yorks captain had surgery June 16 to repair a herniated disk in his neck, rejoined the team Thursday and spoke to media Friday for the first time since Dr. Robert Watkins operated in Marina del Rey, California. Wright said it was not a matter of whether to have surgery but what type.The sense in urgency for this in the doctors voice was much greater than the sense of urgency when I talked to him about my back last year, Wright said. I had a significant disk rupture. ... They were afraid it could bruise or it could cause permanent damage.Wright kept his head centered, shoulders back, a bit like Lurch in The Addams Family. He is scheduled for X-rays six weeks after the operation and will not be allowed to start rehabilitation until three months following the surgery. That timetable makes a 2016 return unlikely.Its really not doing anything. Its letting the bones kind of fuse together, he said.Doctors made Wright stay in California for a week after the surgery in order to monitor him. He said the large bandages were taken off Thursday, and he watched that nights 4-3 comeback win over the Chicago Cubs from the Mets bullpen. He was in the bullpen again Friday, holding a mirror on a pole that allowed him to see peripherally and behind.Im not allowed to be in the dugout because Im fairly helpless right now -- so if there comes a foul ball in there, Im not going to have much of a way to protect myself, he said. That will be my new spot for the foreseeable future. At least I get to be in uniform. At least I get to be around the action. I get to see it from a different perspective. Maybe I didnt have as much respect for the bullpen guys that I might have at the end of this.Mets manager Terry Collins said Wrights demeanor helps the other players.Were all glad to have him back, he said. He brings a little different atmosphere in the clubhouse.Wright looked thinner and said after surgery sitting up was kind of a two-man job to try to get me up. He remains on pain medication and will keep using it for another week. He has an anxiousness of just mis-stepping, losing my balance or having somebody come up and slap me in the back.Im more worried about that right now than I am the actual pain, he said. Theres a neck brace that Im supposed to wear kind of at times where Im around a lot of people or might get bumped into or riding in a car.Now 33, the third baseman was on the disabled list from April 15 to Aug. 24 last year when he strained his right hamstring and then developed spinal stenosis. He returned and helped the Mets win their first NL pennant since 2000, and at the time of his latest injury he was batting .226 with seven homers, 14 RBI and 55 strikeouts in 137 at-bats.Always open, Wright talked about his surgery in detail.They go through the front of your neck, so when theyre going through the front, theyve got to move some stuff around, so youve got a sore throat for a little while, he said. They removed the disk, they removed the fragments and whatever was substance that was inside the disks off of my spine. They put a little metal cage. They fit it into the space that the disk was in. ... They stick a hollow-bit drill into your hip. They get some of that bone marrow out. They put it in the cage to help with the fusion, and then they put the screws and the plate in.He does not think the stenosis will complicate his return from neck surgery, though he thinks it might slow his recovery.It will be interesting to see what it takes to get my back where it was while I was playing, he said.Because of his extended absence, Wright would not mind if the Mets make a move at third base, like signing Cuban infielder Yulieski Gourriel.If they feel like theres a better option, obviously they owe it to the fans, they owe it to themselves, they owe it to the organization to pursue it, he said. Julian Love Youth Jersey . Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the Carolina Hurricanes, announced Wednesday that the team would assign Swedish forward Elias Lindholm to his nations team for the upcoming tournament. Harry Carson Youth Jersey .H. -- Matt Kenseth made it 2 for 2 in the Chase, holding off teammate Kyle Busch to win Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. http://www.authenticnygiantspro.com/Lawrence-taylor-giants-jersey/ . Duchene scored two goals and had an assist, helping the Colorado Avalanche beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-2 on Friday night to match the best 10-game start in team history. Historically, conditions outside Asia have been the toughest for opening batsmen; in England, South Africa and New Zealand, the ball swings and seams, while Australian pitches have offered more bounce. Over the last five years, though, opening the batting in Sri Lanka has been more difficult than in any other country.In 87 innings in Tests since the beginning of 2012, the average opening partnership in Sri Lanka has been 25.82, easily the lowest among all countries with a cut-off of 30 partnerships. (The average in Zimbabwe is 22.19, from 21 opening stands there during this period.) The only century opening partnership in Sri Lanka during this period was more than four years ago, in April 2012, when Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss added 122 in Colombo. There have been only four other 80-plus stands in this period, while 32 times out of 87 - thats 37% of the total innings - the partnership has ended before getting into double digits. That includes the dismal numbers from the ongoing Sri Lanka-Australia Test in Pallekele, when the first wicket in each of the first three innings fell for single-digit scores.The average opening stand in Sri Lanka during this period is 16% lower than in any other country (with the 30-innings cut-off). The next lowest is in South Africa, which has always been a difficult country for opening batsmen, but even there the average is more than five runs higher than the average in Sri Lanka. In the other Asian countries the averages are much higher - 40.16 in the UAE, 43.47 in India and 45.93 in Bangladesh - confirming that conditions in Asia are quite favourable for batsmen when the ball is new. Except, it would seem, when the country in question is Sri Lanka. The concept of home advantage for batsmen is a well-entrenched one, but over the last five years it hasnt held true for Sri Lankas opening pairs. In 44 partnerships at home since the beginning of 2012, they have averaged 27.59, with a highest stand of 93 not out, by Dimuth Karunaratne and Tharanga Paranavitana against New Zealand in Galle in 2012. Their numbers in the last year are especially abysmal: in 13 innings since July 2015, the openers have added more than 15 only once, and have averaged 10.15 per partnership. Their partnerships during this period read thus: 15, 12, 15, 0, 1, 8, 11, 1, 56, 1, 0, 6, 6. In 44 partnerships at home in the last four and a half years, Sri Lanka have had 24 sub-20 stands, and only seven in excess of 50.They have done much better overseas: in 35 away partnerships during this period, they have scored 248 more runs than they have in 44 home partnershhips, and averaged a healthy 40. Deandre Baker Womens Jersey. 20. Apart from Australia, where the average has been only 19.16 in six innings, the Sri Lankan openers have done well everywhere, averaging 64.33 in Bangladesh, 52 in the UAE, 41 in New Zealand and South Africa, and 37.70 in England. Compared to 24 sub-20 stands in 44 home innings, in 35 away innings they have had only ten such stands.That is a huge contrast to the other subcontinent teams, whose opening pairs do much better at home than away. Indias openers have averaged 51.68 at home and 25.57 away in the same period. Pakistan have averaged 41.03 in the UAE and 22.18 in other countries, and Bangladesh have averaged 43.68 at home and 27.50 away. The home and away numbers for Sri Lankas current opening pair, Karunaratne and Kaushal Silva, illustrate just how difficult it has been to play the new ball in Sri Lanka compared to other countries. In 23 overseas partnerships, they have been extremely consistent, going past 30 on 16 occasions. On the recent tour to England, they put together partnerships of 108 and 45, and on the previous tour to England in 2014, they got starts each time, with stands of 54, 25, 37 and 40 in two Tests.At home, on the other hand, they have had little success to speak of, with only three partnerships of 30 or more in 13 innings. Ten times one of them has been dismissed before the team has reached 20. Silva, especially, has struggled at home, averaging 26.39 from 23 innings, compared to an overseas average of 39.86 in away Tests since the start of 2012.That, again, is a huge contrast with other opening pairs from the subcontinent. M Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, for example, average 65.44 from ten partnerships at home during this period, but outside Asia it drops to 25.14 from 21 partnerships. Both home and overseas opening pairs have struggled to string together partnerships in Sri Lanka in these last four and a half years. Sri Lankas openers have done poorly, but overseas teams have fared even worse, averaging 24.04 for the first wicket. When India toured there last year, for example, their opening partnerships aggregated 35 in six innings, an average of 5.83. Sri Lanka wasnt always so inhospitable to opening pairs. In the five years before 2012, the average stand here was a healthy 38.50, which was higher than the opening stands in South Africa, West Indies and New Zealand. Lately, though, all opening batsmen would probably wish they were elsewhere than in Sri Lanka. ' ' '