AGENCIES
SYDNEY
Australia plan to bowl pace ace Mitchell Starc until he breaks down with a chronic ankle injury that will require surgery and a four-month spell from cricket.
Starc is suffering bone spurs in an ankle and his future is "in the lap of the gods," Australia's chairman of selectors Rod Marsh says. "My understanding of Starc is that he can keep going until it actually gets a hell of a lot worse, and then he will have to have an operation," Marsh told reporters in Adelaide on Monday. "Rest won't help him."
Starc has been included in Australia's 15-man squad for a two-Test tour of Bangladesh next month. "He has got spurs in his ankle and there is a bit of bone that has broken off and floating and every now and then it gets into a position where it is just chronically painful," Marsh said. "Eventually it is going to have to be removed but it will take another three or four months after the operation for him to be able to play again.
"We have got some pretty important cricket coming including the T20 World Cup and we would like to see Starc lead the attack for that ... but if he can't, he can't. But at the moment the plan is for him to keep going."
Marsh said Starc had a cortisone injection in the troublesome ankle in England which forced him out of the fourth one-day international against the Poms. "He wasn't rested, he had a cortisone injection and that took a day or two to take hold and get him pain free," Marsh said. "How long that (cortisone) will last and what will happen, it's in the lap of the gods."
