Colly to shoulder burden

Required injection to play at Lord's

Last updated: 12th May 2008

Paul Collingwood England Durham Apr 08

Collingwood: pain-killing injection

This is the last injection I can have in this particular area, so hopefully I can keep it strong and manage it from now on.

Paul Collingwood
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England batsman Paul Collingwood has had a pain-killing injection in his shoulder in order to play in the first Test against New Zealand, which starts at Lord's on Thursday.

Collingwood, 32, first felt soreness in his right shoulder during the pre-Christmas tour of Sri Lanka and has now had a total of three cortisone injections in the area to numb the pain.

The problem flared up again for Collingwood - whose medium pace supplements England's four-man bowling attack - during early-season outings with Durham.

"I guess it's the stress you put the shoulder under and we have played a fair bit of cricket since the time I did it in Sri Lanka," he said.

"This is the last injection I can have in this particular area, so hopefully I can keep it strong and manage it from now on.

"After the last couple of cortisones I have had, a few days later I have come in to bowl at 100 percent.

"So I have got no worries about doing that on Thursday as well."

Last resort

Surgery is likely to be necessary in the long-term and would sideline Collingwood for at least three months.

That is viewed as a last resort by England's one-day captain, who plans to manage the problem with day-to-day rehabilitation to delay an operation for an long as possible.

"The last resort is to go down the route of saying it is too sore to carry on," he added.

"I know this cortisone will work for the next two months at least, and hopefully I can manage it, keep it strong and limit it to as little pain as possible.

"There are never any gaps, so how do you have three to six months off?

"Until the day comes when I think it is affecting me on the field and affecting my performance I am not going to worry about it.

"Surgery is the last thing I want because you miss so much cricket and you never know how you're going to respond to it."

Although Collingwood enters the three-match series against New Zealand with a paltry 34 runs in five innings for Durham this summer, he has a good record at Lord's, where he struck a century against West Indies in the corresponding fixture 12 months ago.

"It would have been great to come into the Test match with a hundred or a few 50s under the belt but it is a difficult time of the year to bat," he added.