Cricket: Caddick X-ray points to soreness rather than a fracture: England's front-line bowler set to miss the first one-day international - Indian all-rounder marks a personal milestone in Tests

WHENEVER a cricket team is visiting the West Indies, they usually end up with more photographs of bone fractures than tourist snaps, but happily for England their first visitor to a hospital X-ray department yesterday emerged with a reasonably clean bill of health.

Andrew Caddick, who has been England's most impressive bowler so far, does not after all have a tour- threatening stress fracture of the right shin, although it is both sore and inflamed enough for him to be a doubtful starter for the first one- day international here a week today.

Caddick had two different types of scan at Bridgetown's Pine Medical Centre yesterday, both of which suggested that the problem is confined to soreness and inflammation. This, however, is still painful enough for him to require a lengthy rest. Dave Roberts, the physiotherapist, said yesterday: 'He will need at least a week off, with a course of anti-inflammatory tablets, and maybe 10 days. After that he will have another scan.'

As Roberts also said, 'We are 100 per cent certain it is not a stress fracture', a further scan seems a touch odd, and there is usually only cause for qualified optimism over this type of injury, as stress fractures of the shin are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Will Carling, the England rugby captain, played with one throughout the 1989 Home International series after an initially negative read-out, but was later forced to have an operation and missed that summer's British Lions tour to Australia.

The old-fashioned cure for shin soreness, an occupational hazard for bowlers, used to be to play through it, but cricket - as with other sports - has made considerable medical advances since the days when the mere sight of a relatively untrained and heavy-handed individual emerging from the pavilion with a bucket of water and a cold sponge was enough to effect an immediate miracle cure on an injured player.

Nowadays, professional bowlers rarely take the field until they have spent half an hour wired up to a machine with more needles, digitals and gadgetry than Captain Kirk gets by with on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise, and pain- killing sprays are applied almost as a matter of routine.

Mostly, if the injured player imagines it is doing him some good, then it works whatever it is. When the former West Indian wicketkeeper, Jeff Dujon, was hit on the shoulder during a Test match, the physio, Dennis Waite, ran on with a deodorant spray by mistake, and after a burst from this, Dujon batted on in perfect health, not to mention smelling rather nicely.

On another occasion, during the Kerry Packer World Series matches in the late 1970s, the West Indian fast bowler, Wayne Daniel, never went on to the field without applying a potion to a sore Achilles, which so intrigued the physio that he had it sent away for forensic analysis. It turned out to be acne cream.

The qualified good news about Caddick's condition may yet turn out to be not quite so good for Chris Lewis. Caddick has already shown himself to be a more than handy batsman as well as a class bowler, and three years after his England debut, Lewis has yet to convince all those who matter that his attitude is commensurate with his talent.

Yesterday, the only stress fracture in the England camp was the one that applied to Keith Fletcher's temper after watching Lewis indulging in something closer to baseball than batting in the Kensington Oval practice net.

Having failed to distinguish himself against the quicker bowlers, Lewis had a head-up hoik at Ian Salisbury, and Fletcher pulled Lewis aside for a bout of finger-wagging.

After being taken off in the Leeward Islands match after bowling five no-balls in two overs that cost 18 runs, this was not a performance calculated to win friends and influence influential people.

Lewis will have to produce something a bit more convincing in the four-day match which starts here tomorrow, assuming he is named in the side this morning. The West Indian squads for the one-day international and the first Test in Jamaica a week on Saturday are also expected to be announced today.