Foot injury to keep Lee out for a month
Monday, 29 December 2008
Australia will almost certainly enter the series finale in Sydney next week with a vastly inexperienced attack after learning Brett Lee faces a month out of the game due to a foot injury.
Lee has been out of form and was unable to improve his series figures of 1 for 200 when the problem kept him off the ground for the entire third day against South Africa at the MCG.
Lee has what the team physio Alex Kountouris described as a stress reaction - "on the way to being a stress fracture" - in the fourth metatarsal in his left foot. While there is a chance Lee could bowl in the second innings, it could take as little as one ball to turn the small crack into a stress fracture and a four- to six-week layoff is probably required either way.
"I don't think he'll be able to play the Sydney Test," Kountouris said. "We'll wait and reassess at the end of the game but if he's got what we think he's got and it's been confirmed by scans that he's got a stress fracture, it'll probably mean we're going to have to rest him for a period of time to let it settle. We'll probably get a specialist opinion but it will be something between four and six weeks I think."
That would rule Lee out of Australia's ODIs against South Africa and New Zealand and would mean a potential return in the Test series in South Africa that begins in late February.
Kountouris said the injury was caused by overuse and was not uncommon in fast bowlers. Lee has also had problems with his left ankle and has had four operations on the joint, the most recent of which kept him out of last year's World Cup. — Cricinfo
Lee has been out of form and was unable to improve his series figures of 1 for 200 when the problem kept him off the ground for the entire third day against South Africa at the MCG.
Lee has what the team physio Alex Kountouris described as a stress reaction - "on the way to being a stress fracture" - in the fourth metatarsal in his left foot. While there is a chance Lee could bowl in the second innings, it could take as little as one ball to turn the small crack into a stress fracture and a four- to six-week layoff is probably required either way.
"I don't think he'll be able to play the Sydney Test," Kountouris said. "We'll wait and reassess at the end of the game but if he's got what we think he's got and it's been confirmed by scans that he's got a stress fracture, it'll probably mean we're going to have to rest him for a period of time to let it settle. We'll probably get a specialist opinion but it will be something between four and six weeks I think."
That would rule Lee out of Australia's ODIs against South Africa and New Zealand and would mean a potential return in the Test series in South Africa that begins in late February.
Kountouris said the injury was caused by overuse and was not uncommon in fast bowlers. Lee has also had problems with his left ankle and has had four operations on the joint, the most recent of which kept him out of last year's World Cup. — Cricinfo