Jacob Oram may miss the majority of the domestic cricket season after suffering a relapse with his broken foot during a fitness test during Central Districts' trial in Palmerston North this week.

Now resting with his foot in plaster, at his own request, he is committed to letting nature take its course rather than rushing back too quickly and suffering more problems.

He has already had discussions about playing cricket in England during the winter in order to make up for the lost time he is likely to suffer in New Zealand this summer.

With winter tours, and the lure of a place in New Zealand's World Cup squad in 2003, Oram, 23, has every reason to make sure he gets the injury properly healed.

"I'd been hitting balls, catching, doing light jogging for a couple of weeks before the match.

"When I looked at the calendar with the specialist when first suffering the injury we looked at being right by the first State Championship game.

"I was confident I would be fit. I had fielded in the morning and my foot felt fine. I had been batting for about an hour and felt right and was running between the wickets.

"I heard a crack when I was in mid-stride and it was very painful when I landed on it. It just went on me. An hour later I saw the X-rays and saw it was broken," he said.

Oram said the chances now were that he would be out for the whole State Shield season which disappointed him as he would have liked to lead the side in its defence of the domestic one-day title.

Now that he has suffered another blow with the injury he is not even thinking about what opportunities he may be missing, such as the VB tri-series with Australia and South Africa, and possibly the home series between New Zealand and England.

He just wants to get over the injury, no matter how long it takes.

The frustrating thing for him is that he has to sit around unable to do anything.

He has had the injury plastered this time, at his own request.

"I did it for my own piece of mind. It's better safe than sorry and I'll have no worries about it for a month. It will be cut off a couple of days before Christmas.

"I'm in no hurry this time, I just want to get it right," he said.

© CricInfo