Darren Gough is to fly home from England's Ashes tour, and will miss the World Cup as well. Gough has been ruled out for at least three months after seeing a knee specialist in Adelaide. He has not played a Test for England since the last Test of the last Ashes series, at The Oval in 2001, and there has to be some doubt as to whether he will ever do so again.

"I'm going to go home and work hard on continually strengthening my knee," Gough said. "Obviously this is another setback and it's going to be a huge disappointment to miss the Ashes and the World Cup, but I want to explore all the medical options that are open to me before I make any decisions about my future career. But I'm running out of time and options"

Alex Tudor, who was called up as temporary cover for Gough last week, will now stay with the squad for the rest of the tour.

Even by England's standards, this has been a disastrous tour for injuries and absenteeism. Before the first Test has even finished they have had to call up four replacements from the original squad: Rob Key for Graham Thorpe, Craig White for Andrew Flintoff, Chris Silverwood for Simon Jones and now Tudor for Gough.

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