All stressed out
While Wayne Rooney ruminates on football's curse of the metatarsal, James Anderson has the cricketing equivalent to contend with.
The Lancashire seamer has become the latest in a long line of fast bowlers to succumb to a stress fracture of the back.
While Lancashire hope he will be fit again in two months, recent precedents suggest England should not pencil him into their summer plans just yet.
The most serious case of recent years involved New Zealand spearhead Shane Bond, who only returned to action last summer after 28 months out.
He eventually required an operation that grafted hip bone into a vertebra, secured with bolts and wire.
It can take weeks or months and it can be as much a psychological as physiological process
Notts and former SA physio Craig SmithAfter surgery Bond was unable to walk for six weeks, took another four months to regain fitness and, even after adapting his bowling style, plays under the fear "it could go at any time".
Pakistan's Umar Gul spent a year on the sidelines with three stress fractures in his spine, while West Indian Fidel Edwards took eight months to recover from a back injury.
Closer to home, former England fast bowler Alex Tudor endured two injury-ruined seasons at Surrey before a visit to a Munich-based specialist diagnosed collagen damage within his spine.
And Andrew Flintoff recently revealed his fears that his career could be cut short if the persistent back injuries of his early career - caused by a slight curvature of the spine - return. "Every day I bowl I wonder how much longer (my back) is going to last," Flintoff said. "The fear of those old problems returning is always at the back of my mind."
So how certain can Anderson, already ruled out of England's forthcoming Test series with Sri Lanka, be about a prompt recovery?
Craig Smith, the former South Africa physiotherapist who now works with Nottinghamshire after a spell at Lancashire, warns the comeback trail may be fraught with difficulties.
"Stress fractures are not like metatarsal injuries, which you can be back from in six-to-eight weeks," he said"It varies from bowler to bowler, and where in the spine the injury is.
bbc