Black Caps facing a bizarre injury crisis

Out of players: Initial 14-man squad down to 10 healthy bodies for final T20 match

As if their four-wicket Twenty20 cricket win over Sri Lanka yesterday wasn’t bizarre enough, the Black Caps now face the stunning scenario of potentially not having enough fit players for the third and final game in two days.

Injuries to Ross Taylor, Martin Guptill and Tom Bruce have been added to the fractured thumb suffered by Lockie Ferguson, to leave the Black Caps’ initial 14-man squad

down to 10 healthy bodies, and with little time to heal or call in the cavalry.

Taylor didn’t play after hurting his left hip flexor in the first Twenty20, Guptill had to hobble off with a right abdominal muscle injury suffered while attempting a runout, and Bruce twisted his knee when attempting a second run, requiring some heavy strapping.

The steadily increasing number of walking wounded led to television commentator and former Black Cap Kyle Mills jokingly warming up in the commentary box, but luckily for the Black Caps it looks like at least one of the three will be ready to go for the final international before they take two months off.

Taylor is the most likely starter, having described his absence yesterday as a “precautionary measure”.

“I swung at the ball a bit too hard, swung and missed, and felt [the hip flexor] twinge a little bit — more of a precautionary measure, nothing major.”

His replacement, Bruce, filled in admirably, making 53 from 46 balls in a record 109-run stand with Colin de Grandhomme, until he also picked up a knock in the dying moments of the clash.

Bruce told the Radio Sport Breakfast his injury needed some rest but wasn’t overly serious, although he expected Guptill to be unavailable for the dead rubber.

“It was full contact tonight, wasn’t it,” Bruce said with a laugh.

“I’ll ice the knee and rest up the next couple of days — I think it should be right, fingers crossed anyway. I think Guppy might be struggling a wee bit.”

And with their resources already stretched to breaking point, Bruce suspects there may be not too many training requirements before the third Twenty20.

“The boys will rest and recover tomorrow, and I’m not too sure if we’ll have a training the day before the game or not. With the amount of injuries we might just rest.”

The Black Caps ended up on the right side of the result thanks to some bizarre scenes in their second T20.

With four balls remaining, and seven runs required, Mitchell Santner hit Sri Lankan spinner Wanindu Hasaranga to the wide long-on boundary.

Racing around from long-on, Shehan Jayasuriya claimed a superb running catch, only to collide with teammate Kusal Mendis, who was sprinting across from midwicket.

The pair painfully clashed knees — sending Jayasuriya into the boundary rope, still clutching the ball.

As both lay prone on the ground, the umpires — just as baffled as

low amateur in the British Open, he turned pro and won in his third start at the Portugal Masters.

Just like that, he was billed as the next great player from England, and it didn’t hurt that he came from the same golf club as Nick Faldo in Welwyn Garden City.

“I figured I would win every three weeks,” Lewis said with a laugh.

Instead, he plummeted to as low as No 728 in the world ranking and was relegated to the Challenge Tour. That time in Miami proved valuable.

“I do well when I work hard and practice a lot,” Lewis said. “Being able to come to Miami from January until March and work every day on my swing, I took a lot of confidence out of that. I qualified for both Opens that year and was able to get some confidence from that.”

It paid off when he won on the Challenge Tour, and then two weeks later won the Portugal Masters again (seven years apart) to regain his card.

Another milestone was the Saudi International in January, where he finished third behind Dustin Johnson. That got him into the top 10 in the Race to Dubai and made him eligible for the World Golf Championship in Mexico City. His world ranking climbed to No 61, getting him into another WGC at the Dell Match Play.

The few FedEx Cup points he earned from those WGCs, along with the British Open, wound up going a long way.