Mark Wood is set to be ruled out of England’s next Ashes Test at the Gabba after reporting soreness in the troublesome left knee that required surgery in March and forced him to miss the entire home summer.
The eight-wicket defeat suffered in Perth last week was Wood’s first competitive game since the Champions Trophy in February and his first Test outing for 14 months. That he is now struggling after sending down 11 overs in the first Test is of huge concern given the size of England’s task ahead.
Though a voluntary session, that Wood was missing from England’s return to the nets at Allan Border Field on Saturday morning was notable and confirmation soon followed that he had reported soreness in the joint. The second Test, starting on Thursday, is expected to come too soon.
It may be that conditions in Brisbane call for a spinner to be added to the attack regardless, with Shoaib Bashir and Will Jacks the two options. If England want to stick to a five-pronged pace attack then Josh Tongue, with the Lions in Canberra, would probably be next in line.
Wood’s fragility has been a theme of his stop-start career, but the lack of time off the field did not help. The 35-year-old opened the bowling on the second morning in Perth as England looked to shut down Australia’s first innings and was then back at it after tea trying to defend a small target of 205 runs.
In between he was in the dressing room with his legs in a “game-ready machine” – a full-length ice pack used by fast bowlers to speed up recovery – but he was forced to take it off early and strap on the pads once England’s middle order collapsed after lunch.
On the For The Love of Cricket podcast, Wood said: “I was using the ice machine in the backroom. All of a sudden we start losing wickets and I look down [at the machine] and there’s still 17 minutes to go, then another one and it’s 12 minutes left. I thought: ‘I’ve got to get off this and get ready.’
“At lunch, we are assessing what’s gone well and at no point did I think that in the next hour or so I’d be bowling again. It was one of those days.”
There is no suggestion at this stage that Wood’s tour is over and another nine-day gap sits between Brisbane and the third Test in Adelaide, which starts on 17 December. Still, this latest setback follows an eight-over workout in England’s warm-up match that led to scans on a tight hamstring.