England’s red-ball reset has been hit with a double setback with news that Saqib Mahmood and Matthew Fisher have been ruled out for the remainder of the season with stress fractures of the back.
Mahmood had missed Lancashire’s past three County Championship fixtures, and after complaining of back pain was he sent for scans which confirmed a fracture. Fisher has played once since he made his Test debut alongside Mahmood in England’s tour of the West Indies in March with his Yorkshire coach, Ottis Gibson, describing his problem as “not a stress fracture, a stress reaction”. That diagnosis has now changed.
