England seamer Toby Roland-Jones suffers a stress fracture, set to miss the Ashes

The English team is gearing up for the Ashes as the domestic players are fighting for a place in the Test squad. The County Championship is nicely poised and there are some bright talents and newcomer have also managed to impress the selectors. Essex is leading the table with 212 points while Lancashire and Middlesex follow them in the 2nd and 3rd places respectively.

However, Middlesex, who are sitting pretty at 3rd in the table have been handed a blow today. Their star bowler Toby Roland-Jones has been ruled for the rest of the season. He walked off the pitch with a stiff back and looked okay as he came on to bat as well. The game went well for Middlesex as they won against Lancashire who are second in the table.

Roland-Jones injury a huge blow to England

The right-arm pacer recently made his debut for England and has been extremely exciting. He was a surety in the squad and was in the plans of the selectors. Such injuries are hard to recover from, as he has a stress fracture in his backbone. It is expected that it would take him around eight to twelve weeks to recover.

Roland-Jones has an outstanding record for England. He has picked up 17 wickets in the four Test matches he has played. He averages 19.65 balls per wicket and for a newcomer to be a prolific wicket-taker is superb. If the injury takes months to recover then it will be very difficult for him to make it into the Ashes squad. It is so disheartening for the 29-year-old.

Middlesex confirm the injury

The County team tweeted about the injury to confirm the news. He did walk off the field but the nature of the injury was not known. However, Middlesex made sure everybody knew exactly what was happening. They posted a statement on their website saying that they were extremely disappointed to announce the scan results and also stated that he will not take any further part in the Championship.

The statement read, “Middlesex Cricket are extremely disappointed to announce that the result of the medical scan which Toby undertook yesterday has revealed that he has a stress fracture in his L5 vertebra (lower back), which will mean that he will take no further part in the domestic season for Middlesex.”

They even tweeted about it, “BREAKING: Sad to announce that @tobyrj21 will miss the rest of domestic season with a lower back stress fracture…”

BREAKING: Sad to announce that @tobyrj21 will miss the rest of domestic season with a lower back stress fracture… https://t.co/lmviSAoIX2 pic.twitter.com/bqsCBe3fLG

— Middlesex Cricket (@Middlesex_CCC) September 22, 2017