Paul Collingwood has emerged from another freak injury just relieved not to have stalled his England career again.

The Durham all-rounder broke his nose during a basketball competition designed to minimise the boredom among the players but he is still able to remain part of a one-day squad which is becoming increasingly frustrated by the rain-hit series against West Indies.

After ten days of watching the persistent rain, during which time only one of the first four matches has been played to its conclusion, the 15-man squad could have been forgiven for thinking of home and this summer's challenges, either at county or international level.

But despite yesterday's fourth one-day international at the Queen's Park Ground being washed out without a ball being bowled, Collingwood is delighted he is not set for an early journey home.

Collingwood rose to put away a basket but carried on running after his jump and collided head-first with a metal pole at the back of the court and immediately feared the worst for his future on the tour.

''It was quite an embarrassing injury,'' admitted Collingwood, who was ruled out for most of last summer with a shoulder injury after sustaining it during a pre-season match for Durham at Old Trafford.

''I was thinking I was Michael Jordan or someone like that - I had a big jump towards the basket and laid the ball off and that went around the ring and I was looking at that and carried on running straight into a big metal post.

''It sounded like a baseball bat when I hit it and the boys thought I'd done something serious at first because there was a lot of claret around, but I was quite lucky.

''I knew I'd broken it straight away because I looked down and my nose was on the left hand side of my face, but I've done it before and I was just thinking it might keep me out for a while and that was the big worry straight away.''

Fortunately for Collingwood, England physio Dean Conway was on hand to calm his nerves and take him to the doctor at the university ground and he had his nose re-set virtually immediately.

''I had polyps out last year during an operation on my nose and I don't like my nose being touched so to do something like that so soon did panic me a little,'' confirmed Collingwood.

''Dean had a bit of a laugh and a joke about it and managed to calm me down.

''Thankfully the university ground we were playing at is a medical university so I went straight up to see the doctor and he grabbed both sides of my nose with his thumbs and pressed it back into place.

''It was very painful - a couple of yelps came out. He worried me to start with when he grabbed either side of my nose and asked me if I took pain very well so I backed off straight away.

''Dean told me that if I'd have strained my calf I would have been out for a week and a half, but he said I would be okay to play straight away.

''It's certainly up there with one of the daftest injuries I've ever picked up - if someone had got it on camera it would have been funny to watch again.''

That painful but amusing episode at least filled in some of the time for the frustrated squad, who have played only 76 overs in ten days but weather forecasts are predicting similarly bad conditions for both this weekend's back-to-back internationals in St Lucia and the series finale at Barbados on May 5.

''There's not much to do,'' claimed Collingwood. ''There are no indoor nets so it's just a case of trying to keep ourselves occupied with fitness work and a few games here and there - it's tough mentally more than anything else.

''We all want to get out there and hopefully you know your own game well enough that when the opportunity comes around to play that you're able to flick the switch.''

Despite having a winter programme with 13 one-day internationals scheduled, England have been plagued for most of the winter with bad weather and have so far played only five matches, with their last competitive outing being in Guyana, when they won a 30-over-a-side match by two wickets a week last Sunday.

Five of their last six matches have now been washed out and denied England the opportunity of making judgements about many members of this squad