NEW DELHI:
England
's
Jack Leach
is set to undergo surgery following a knee injury that has sidelined him for the ongoing
Test series
in India, the spinner announced on Saturday.
The 32-year-old sustained the knee injury twice while fielding in England's first Test triumph in Hyderabad, causing him to miss the subsequent two matches as India rallied to take a 2-1 lead in the series.
"I'm going to have an operation to get the rest of the swelling out because it's not budging," Leach told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"It was quite an unfortunate one. It was the second ball of the first innings in the field, so that whole game I was playing with this knee problem.
"I obviously knocked it a few times throughout that game and it has just created a long period of recovery. I need to get the operation done and then hopefully I can get back to playing cricket."
England's next Test series is not scheduled until the home summer, where they will host the West Indies in July, shortly after the Twenty20 World Cup. Meanwhile, Somerset, Leach's county team, is set to kick off their new season in April.
"I'd love to have a run of playing cricket and getting into a bit of a rhythm again and hopefully that can happen again once I've got this sorted," Leach added.
In Leach's absence, Shoaib Bashir has stepped up for the tourists in the first innings of the fourth Test with figures of 4-84 so far as he ripped through the top order to restrict India to 219-7, trailing England by 134 runs.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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