Waiting to fly home from Lahore

Less than a year later, he had retired from first-class cricket altogether.

Though insured for such an eventuality, the experience of Headley has clearly made the ECB reluctant to commit itself to the possibility of paying for a cricketer to spend a season on the physio's bench.

It is an integral part of the contract that players must keep the coach or the physiotherapist informed of all injuries and illnesses.

This stipulation led to the normally reticent Duncan Fletcher publicly criticising Andrew Flintoff for arriving in Sri Lanka without having told anybody that he was carrying an ankle injury.

With winter tours also being covered by central contracts, the health and fitness of regular England players is now the concern of the national team's management for all 12 months of the year.

Hat-trick joy at Old Trafford in 1995

Cork managed just 24 overs in England's opening first-class match in Pakistan before suffering a back strain.

Despite a cortisone injection the pain remained and, after a scan, he returned home before the second Test.

It is doubtful whether Cork would have been able to repeat his heroics of last summer in any event.

But, in helpful conditions Cork has proved himself to be a winner at Test level.

He had match figures of seven for 52 and hit 33 vital runs when England beat the West Indies at Lord's last summer, and finished the series with 20 wickets at 12 apiece.

In 1995, he took seven for -43 on his Test debut against the same opponents, and two matches later claimed the first hat-trick in England for 35 years and the first ever in the opening over of the day.

He has, however, suffered his fair share of injuries in the past - he returned early from the Ashes tour two winters ago - and has on occasion been left out of England squads because the selectors were worried about his frame of mind.

Graveney announces the central contracts for the summer

Graveney made it clear that he is not being asked to take wickets by the bucketful for Derbyshire at the start of the season.

But he must prove that he can play successive matches without a recurrence of the back injury, something that Headley should have been asked to do before signing on the dotted line last year.

The signs are not promising. Officials at Derbyshire are awaiting an update on Cork's progress and recent reports say that he is struggling to be fit for the start of the season.

Time will tell.