Thursday 11 December 2014 17:59, UK
England will apply to the ICC to name a replacement for Craig Kieswetter in their initial squad for the 2015 World Cup.
Kieswetter revealed on Thursday he had suffered a setback in his recovery from a horrific eye injury he sustained playing for Somerset last summer.
He has withdrawn from a stint playing Twenty20 cricket for the Warriors in South Africa and a scheduled spell in Australia's Big Bash League, and there are fears he will not be fit to play at all in 2015.
The big-hitting batsman was one of three wicketkeepers named in the original 30-man squad along with former county team-mate Jos Buttler and Yorkshire's Jonathan Bairstow.
The England and Wales Cricket Board will have to apply to the ICC technical committee to bring someone in to the squad, with Kent's Sam Billings the likely favourite.
Billings scored 458 runs at an average of over 100 for his county in the Royal London One-Day Cup last season - only three players scored more 50-over runs than the 23-year-old in 2014.
Kieswetter suffered a broken nose and fractured eye socket when he was hit by a delivery from Northants all-rounder David Willey in July - he missed the rest of the season but had played 10 times in South Africa's domestic Twenty20 competition, scoring 199 runs.
Sky Sports pundit David Fulton has experience of such facial injuries, having been seriously hurt when facing a bowling machine back in 2003, and he thinks Kieswetter has made the right decision to take a break.
Fulton told Sky Sports News HQ: "I was told to take a year off and that I might never play again. One Harley Street specialist asked me 'what else do you do?' The answer was not a lot so I thought I would try and get back quickly and I was back within six weeks.
"It was probably a bit soon and I broke my finger in my first game back, which gave me another month and was probably a good thing as it turned out.
"I still don't see particularly well out of the right eye now. This was a different injury to Craig's as it struck me flush on the eyeball and tried to spit my eye out of the back of my brain.
"Craig had a fractured eye socket and optimal floor problems so it is a different injury but the bottom line when you come back as a player, you want to know everything is working really, really well and that your reflexes are sharp.
"I managed to get back but probably didn't play the pull and the hook as much, and my reflexes weren't quite the same, but you find a way of coping. If Craig is having complications and is not happy how he is seeing the back then it makes sense to take a bit of time out."
