Talented but distressingly injury prone, Reece Topley's England career - indeed, his Hampshire career as well - has been severely disrupted by injury, inviting questions at 23 as to whether this beanpole left-armer can survive the rigours of regular cricket or if he is heading sooner than he might wish to a future limited to the 20-over game.

At a skyscraper height of 6ft 7ins, Topley has always towered above his team-mates. An early developer, he first hit the headlines in 2009 when, as a 15-year-old net bowler, his favourite player Kevin Pietersen drilled a drive into the side of his head. He needed stitches but Pietersen left him a signed bat as a more welcome memento.

It wasn't until 2011 that Topley started making his own headlines. As a gangly 17-year-old left-arm seamer with huge potential he took 14 wickets for Essex in his three opening Championship matches - including five-wicket hauls in each of his first two games against Kent and Middlesex.

That season was interrupted as Topley had to return to Royal Hospital School in Suffolk to start revising for the summer exams. His father, the former Essex player Don, was his school teacher and cricket mentor so slacking in any department is not an option.

Topley seemed admirably unaffected by the early hype. At the Under-19 World Cup in Australia in 2012, he stood out as a professional in a boys' game: no one claimed more than his 19 wickets, which came at nine apiece, and Topley relished his status as a senior bowler in England's side. Further recognition - before he had even turned 19 - arrived with an England Lions call-up for the 2013 tour Down Under.

The ECB and Essex have been careful to manage his workload, the county rotating him with their other talented quicks. He was a key member of the team in 2013, taking more than 80 wickets in all formats to earn a place on England's Performance Programme trip to Australia. However, a back injury ruled him out of going to Sri Lanka with the Lions, a reminder of how young fast bowlers need protecting.

Topley had played for Essex representative sides since the age of nine, but immediately after his England debut in a T20I against Australia in 2015 he announced he was on his way. At 21, his childhood county lacked, in his eyes, the ambition to sustain him, comfortable with Division Two of the Championship and unable to turn its excellent wins ratio in the limited-overs game into trophies. Topley headed for Hampshire, whose success in the limited-overs game was undeniable. As a tall left-armer with an ability to swing the ball at a decent lick, his appeal was obvious.

But injury struck again, this time in more freakish fashion, in his first season with Hampshire. He failed to bowl a ball after being ruled out for the season during his debut when his left hand was broken when he was hit by a bouncer while batting against Warwickshire's Boyd Rankin. Shoulder surgery followed in the close season and then he suffered another back stress fracture in August 2017 in a season in which he had managed only 112 overs in all competitions.

ESPNcricinfo staff