Mark Wood is set to be ruled out of England\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The eight-wicket defeat suffered in Perth<\/a> last week was Wood\u2019s first competitive cricket since the Champions Trophy back in February and his first Test outing for 14 months. That he is now struggling after sending down just 11 overs in the first Test is of huge concern given the size of England\u2019s task ahead.<\/p>\n Though a voluntary session, that Wood was missing from England\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Wood\u2019s 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\u2019s first innings and was then back at it after tea trying to defend a small target of 205 runs.<\/p>\n England\u2019s Mark Wood is struggling after sending down just 11 overs in the first Test in Perth. Photograph: Robbie Stephenson\/PA<\/p>\n In between he was in the England dressing room with his legs in a \u201cgame-ready machine\u201d \u2013 a full-length ice pack used by fast bowlers to speed up recovery \u2013 but he was forced to take it off early and strap on the pads once England\u2019s middle order collapsed after lunch.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n