Joe Sayers

Joe Sayers is a Yorkshire top-order batsman who had to overcome a hurdle that no player in cricket's history has faced. In 2010 was diagnosed with Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome, or chronic fatigue. While his team-mates were making a tilt at the Championship, Sayers missed most of the season, forced to go to bed at 3pm every afternoon. At that stage it was not known if he could recover but happily he returned to action for the 2011 season.

When fit, Sayers is a stodgy batsman seeking to play long, stabilising innings. He came through the university system at Oxford, where he studied physics, and made his Yorkshire first-class debut against Leicestershire in 2004, setting the trend for his career by making 35 from 139 balls in his debut innings. England sensed a player who could produce long innings, and were interested enough to call him up as a replacement for Jonathan Trott in the England Lions team in 2009 after a season that brought 1150 first-class runs for Yorkshire.

After a period of treatment and rest, Sayers returned in 2011 to enjoy a successful season that boded well for the future, passing fifty seven times and scoring one century, and signed a new contract in 2012 despite slipping out of favour after a poor start. The following season, he managed just one half-century in 16 innings across all three formats and at the start of 2014, two months after his 30th birthday, Sayers announced his retirement from first-class cricket.
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