Injuries mount as Broad is ruled out

Stuart Broad is a doubt for the first ODI against South Africa at the Wanderers on Friday, after he was ruled out of Tuesday's warm-up game against South Africa A with a shoulder injury.

Broad already missed the Twenty20 series and has still not recovered, 11 days after incurring the damage in a practice match. England's coach, Andy Flower, believes he could yet be fit enough to reinforce a thinly stretched bowling attack, but admits it could be touch and go.

"He's had a number of injections in the past few days and we are waiting to see the reaction to those injections, to see whether it settles," Flower told reporters in Johannesburg. "The medics reckon it's possible that those injections will settle things pretty quickly, so we've got to monitor it day by day.

"He won't play tomorrow, but if he did show significant improvement and then bowled Wednesday and Thursday, it's possible that he would play on Friday."

Broad is one of four England players struggling for fitness at present. Paul Collingwood missed England's mauling in the second Twenty20 match with a recurrence of his long-standing back problem, which Flower thinks will rule him out of Tuesday's game as well.

"Unless it loosens up a lot today I don't think he will play in tomorrow's game either," said Flower.

To compound England's problems, Graeme Swann has a problem with an intercostal muscle and James Anderson, England's senior paceman, has a knee injury. Both are unavailable for the warm-up match and England's growing injury list could mean call up an extra pace bowler.

"We've had it quite a lot, being such an early part of a tour," said Flower. "We reckon they aren't going to be medium-term injuries, and we're hopeful they'll clear up by Friday. Swann will be out of tomorrow's game and so will Anderson, he's got a little problem with his knee. He played with it yesterday but he wasn't 100 percent fit.

Graham Onions, who has only just recovered from injury himself, is now certain to have an opportunity to impress ahead of the opening one-day international on November 20, but the glut of injuries has led Flower to raise the possibility of squad rotation for future contests.

"We had a very heavy summer, then three weeks off and then we started again with gusto in Bloemfontein," he said. "I think in the future we are going to have to target certain periods for strengthening, conditioning programmes for some of these fast bowlers especially and for them to miss the odd international because of it."