NEIL FAIRBROTHER today spoke of the winter scare which has left him with a blood clot in his leg - and revealed he is likely to miss at least the first month of the season.

The 38-year-old former England batsman, who signed a new one-year contract with Lancashire at the end of last season, developed deep vein thrombosis after a routine cartilage operation in February.

He was banned from flying to South Africa for Lancashire's pre-season tour on medical advice, and will also be missing for the first Championship match of the season against Leicestershire.

"It's been difficult this week, because it's been 20 years at Lancashire now and I've never missed the start of the season before," he reflected.

"Once the blood clot goes, to all intents and purposes I will be all right again. But at the moment it's still there, two months after the operation, and I'm still on the blood-thinning tablets and probably will be for another month or so."

Fairbrother had no idea of the trouble to follow when he was advised to have minor knee surgery after a scan had shown some cartilage damage.

"I only had a little niggle," he explained. "But I decided to go in for a clearout or whatever. That hopefully was going to take about three weeks - Mark Chilton went in the day after me, and he's been in the nets practising for a month or so.

"The operation went fine but the day after I started getting a pain in my calf. By the time I got back to the hospital the next day it was absolute agony.

"They found a blood clot in my calf and called in a blood consultant, who explained that over the next seven or 10 days they didn't want it to move up my body into the lungs or something, which wouldn't have been very good at all.

"So I had to keep my feet up for a week, the only time I could take them down was when I went into hospital for injections. It was a bit of a worrying time for 10 days or so."

With no Mike Atherton, John Crawley or Andy Flintoff, it leaves Lancashire without their four batting mainstays in recent years for the start of the season.

Cricket manager Mike Watkinson has been cagey about his plans for the Leicestershire game, but Alec Swann is expected to open with Chilton, with Lancashire's other new signings David Byas and Stuart Law likely to be joined by Graham Lloyd in the middle order.

Kyle Hogg could also be in line to make his Championship debut at the age of 18 after impressing in the under-19 World Cup during the winter, and again on Lancashire's pre-season trip.

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