ESSEX’S trip to Gloucestershire tonight is likely to bring back powerful memories in every sense for the returning Matt Quinn.

The Kiwi recorded his best bowling figures (7-76 and 11-163) in the Championship match at Cheltenham exactly two years ago.

But it was also the game in which the seamer first felt the twinges in his lower back that have blighted his career ever since.

As Essex return to the Cotswold town for a Vitality Blast fixture this evening – followed by a second T20 game of the weekend against Hampshire at Chelmsford tomorrow (5pm start) – the 25-year-old Quinn reflected on the highs and lows of that visit in 2016.

“It feels a long, long time ago that I took those wickets at Cheltenham,” he said. “There have been two Christmases in between and I’ve gone home twice. It was a very successful trip to Cheltenham in terms of the cricket, but it was probably the first time, halfway through the second innings, where my back started to get really sore.”

Quinn has played just three and a half Championship matches in those two years, one last month against Nottinghamshire in his latest comeback, eight Royal London Cup ties, all in 2017, and not a single T20 outing since the end of July 2016. In the meantime he has had a season ticket for the hospital scanning department, been in and out of surgical gowns as screws have been inserted in his back and then taken out again, as well as enduring several bone grafts and long periods of rehabilitation.

“There was a time in the winter, after I broke down again and was told it had got a lot worse, when I was going into surgery thinking, ‘I guess this is my last-chance saloon. If this operation doesn’t work, then there’s nothing else you can really do’. So there was a bit of panic.

“Obviously you have your days when you’re thinking, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ and you can’t do anything, especially after an operation when the surgeon says you’ve got six months of doing nothing. You do think to yourself, ‘Am I wasting my life?’”

Quinn returned to first-team action with two early wickets against Nottinghamshire in a match haul of 5-75. And he is ready for the call-up when it comes.

“I’m at the point now where my contract’s up at the end of the year, and I need to prove to the club that I’ve been worth the wait in terms of getting back to being fit to play, and doing well,” he said.