Jones Back in Trouble After a Net

Simon Jones is intent on looking forwards not backwards as he tries to rejuvenate a career ravaged by injury - and yesterday he did not have much choice in the matter. His neck went into spasm in the nets before the start of play and locked up for the rest of the day.

As injuries go, it sounded more an embarrassment than a setback, but it hardly encourages the belief that this talented but infuriatingly delicate fast bowler can stay fit long enough to restore a reputation built so gloriously during the 2005 Ashes.

People probably awake in Birmingham hotels with a stiff neck every day, but most yawn, throw their head under a shower and slope down to breakfast pretty much as normal. Life is rarely that straightforward for Jones. He spent the entire day off the field, neck wrapped in towels, and on a diet of anti-inflammatories.

It was the fast bowler's equivalent of backing the car into a bollard, but many will conclude again that Jones will be a write-off. Glamorgan offered a game-by-game agreement after he lost his England central contract last summer and Worcestershire's offer of a two-year deal is the championship's great gamble.

Steve Rhodes, Worcestershire's director of cricket, who hailed Jones' signing last autumn as their best since Ian Botham, played down the injury and retained hopes that Jones will reappear before the end of the game. If he does then Worcestershire, 184 ahead with eight second-innings wickets remaining, will be well placed to win and take first blood between two relegated sides eager to reclaim First Division status. "It is not as if Simon has injured an ankle or a knee again," Rhodes said. "He hasn't been able to move his neck much all day, but we hope that the condition will heal quite quickly."

Warwickshire relied upon Jonathan Trott's controlled 80, which ended when he failed to beat Stephen Moore's throw from square leg, and a promising fifty on championship debut from the young Glaswegian, Navdeep Poonia, but that apart they batted scratchily. It is their back-up seamers who look most vulnerable, though, and Moore and Vikram Solanki took advantage after tea in the best batting conditions of the match.