Euan Soutar sensationally broke his left leg attempting a sharp catch bowling against Black Rose at Southover on Sunday.

Euan's hopes of a return to fitness after almost a year out of the game with a severe rectal injury have now been cruelly dashed.

"I should have caught him," said chirpy Chelsea fan Soutar on Tuesday, his leg in plaster from the knee down, "but it was the first one Andre really creamed off my bowling and I was half trying to get out of the way, and that's when I heard something snap in my ankle. I assumed it was just tendons or ligaments, but I couldn't play on."

The rest of the team maybe suspected it coincided neatly with the start of the Chelsea-Arsenal game showing in the clubhouse.

But a triple X-Ray the next morning at Barnet General hospital revealed a double fracture of the tibia just above the ankle.

Little did his team mates know that Euan's tidy spell of bowling amid a Black Rose onslaught had come to such a cruel end. He is now likely to be off work for at least six weeks, and may require surgery to set the bone properly if complications develop.

"It's just one of those things," Euan sighed bravely. "I was bowling really well too. And I got to see the game on telly."

The latest hospitalisation for Soutar follows a double operation down below earlier in the year and leaves partner Kate holding baby Callie once again. The holiday to Lanzarotte next week is also in severe doubt.

"I can hardly walk," he says. And to make things worse, Euan's one and a half hours bowling and fielding left him as stiff as a board. Says Euan; "I can hardly lift the damn crutches, let alone go to work. And they expected me to bat!"

Euan left the ground on Sunday in a sorry, but limping, state, with Specials not very much for eight chasing their arch rival's two hundred and a lot declared. Some of the senior team were convinced Euan could save the game, but the injury was – for once this sorry season for Specials – indisputably genuine.