Mark Wood acknowledged he has started thinking about life after cricket, as the England bowler continues to recover from a knee injury.

The 36-year-old, who has been plagued by injuries throughout his career, suffered his latest setback during the Ashes series, missing the final four Tests with swelling in the knee.

Wood had only just returned to Test cricket after 15 months out with an elbow injury followed by knee surgery.

And the two-time World Cup winner conceded he is contemplating the next step if his recovery "doesn't go well".

"It's real slow-going with the stage I'm at in my career," Wood said on the Tailenders podcast. "It's quite a fine balance, where if I push this too hard, then that could be it.

"It's six-week blocks, it's not day by day, it's specialists and rescans every six weeks. It's been improving since what I got told had been an explosion in my knee in Australia.

#OnThisDay in 2004…

Stephen Harmison was on fire in Jamaica, taking a career-best 7/12 as England bowled West Indies out for 47 runs!pic.twitter.com/vWYXdxBqzD

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) March 14, 2026

"So, every six weeks has been an improvement. I've started running now, and I'm hoping by the next block, I'll be in a position where maybe I can start lightly bowling.

"I tried to get back at certain points, but my knee wasn't quite ready. It's easy in hindsight, even if I was at 80%, then at least the game would have given us an indicator of where I was.

"I've started thinking about other things, doing podcasts, doing my coaching badges. I've now started to try and think for the first time about what I should do if this doesn't go well."