Football tackle grounds Denly

Two days after it chose not to risk injury on a slippery surface, England suffered a self-inflicted blow ahead of the one-day series against Australia when opener Joe Denly hurt his knee playing football in the team's warm-up.

Denly hyper-extended his left knee after being tackled by team-mate Owais Shah and was carried off The Oval by the team's security expert Reg Dickerson and physio Kirk Russell writhing in pain.

The seriousness of Denly's injury will not be known until Friday after he visits a specialist. The 23-year-old made his international debut last week against Ireland.

Ironically, Denly gave up a promising junior football career, which saw him on the books of League One side Charlton, due to a lack of size to concentrate on cricket.

"I was a decent footballer but I didn't really start growing until well after my 17th birthday and I used to get shoved around a bit on the field," Denly said in the match programme last week.

"I got pushed off the ball one day when playing for Whitstable Under-18s and broke my arm, so I decided enough was enough on that front and since then have concentrated on my cricket."

Denly's injury, while also reducing England's squad to 13 fit players for the seven-game series, is set to spark a review of the team's warm-up procedure at training.

Graeme Swann, Ian Bell and, most notably, Matt Prior before the Headingley Test have all hurt themselves playing soccer this summer though none have missed a game.

An angry Andrew Strauss defended the practice, saying the chance of injury was 'very slight' if players followed instructions not to tackle.

"The reason we've played football in the past is because it's something the guys enjoy and it's a good way of getting the blood flowing," Strauss said.

"You'd like to think the players would be sensible enough in the warm-up not to take it too far - I think they did today and so we are definitely going to have to look at it."

"When we do play football in the morning we have a 'no tackling rule' but I'm not sure it was heeded today."

"Unfortunately it's happened today and, if people are going to get injured playing it, then we have to look at (scrapping) it."

The practice of using other sports in warm up, designed to break the monotony of cricket drills, is not limited to England.

The Australian side regularly limbers up by playing kick to kick, touch football or a non-contact form of handball.

Not surprisingly, Stuart Carpenter - Australia's conditioning coach - ignored football in the team's warm-up after England's training mishap.

"He makes it clear to us there's a time and place for a bit of fun but when we're close to a game it's all cricket," said captain Michael Clarke.

"The trainers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They want to let the players enjoy themselves but they also know, like I say, cricket's the No.1 priority."