Giles concerned over future

Ashley Giles needs a leap of faith to bowl again © Getty Images

Ashley Giles, the England spinner, admits he is concerned over his future with the national side.

Giles, 33, underwent surgery on a dodgy hip and missed out on England's tour to India. He has not bowled since the Pakistan tour in late 2005 and said that it is hard to imagine bowling anytime soon.

"I have to face the fact that the injury is career-threatening," Giles told The Mail on Sunday. "If the rehab doesn't succeed, the alternatives are obvious. The specialist thought the hip would have done most of its healing after three months but that hasn't happened. Hopefully this will give it an extra nudge to aid the growth of the new cartilage material."

Though the procedure was undertaken to speed up his recovery, Giles believed that it will take a lot of mental strength to gear himself up. "At some stage I am going to have to take a leap of faith and try to bowl again," he said. "It may even be a case of having to play through a pain threshold to play. But if the pain was anything like it was in Pakistan, or towards the end of the Ashes, which I only managed to get through with a cortisone injection, I really don't think it will be possible for me to continue."

Giles, with 140 wickets from 52 Tests, has been a key member of the England side for the past few seasons. But with Monty Panesar and Shaun Udal, the frontline spinners on the tour to India, having performed credibly Giles admitted that it increased the odds against him. England's domestic season is less than a month away and Giles said he was "struggling" to make himself available for a Test series against Sri Lanka beginning early May.

"My targets are still the same - to get fit and to play for England again," he said. "But I've missed all the time-lines so far. I missed the Test series in India, I missed the one-day series and now we are approaching the start of the domestic season."