CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia – Eng­land fast bowler Re­ece Top­ley will miss the fi­nal three match­es of the on­go­ing T20 se­ries against West In­dies be­cause of in­jury.

The 30-year-old left-arm pac­er in­jured his knee in the open­ing T20I on Sat­ur­day and is set to fly home from St Lu­cia.

Top­ley jarred his right knee in his de­liv­ery stride dur­ing the se­ries open­er, and though he at­tempt­ed to con­tin­ue to bowl his over af­ter a short rain de­lay, he left the field af­ter bowl­ing one more de­liv­ery and took no fur­ther part in the match.

In frus­tra­tion, Top­ley picked up a chair and smashed it on the stair­case handrail, re­sult­ing in him be­ing fined 15 per cent of his match fee by the ICC.

It is the lat­est set-back in a ca­reer that has been lit­tered with in­juries.

Dur­ing the 50-over World Cup in 2023 Top­ley broke his left in­dex fin­ger and al­so suf­fered a ca­reer-threat­en­ing stress frac­ture of the back, and a rolled an­kle – sus­tained on a bound­ary sponge dur­ing a prac­tice match in Bris­bane – that ruled him out of Eng­land’s suc­cess­ful T20 World Cup cam­paign in 2022.

CMC