EXPERIENCED Worcestershire seamer Jack Shantry is yet to play any competitive cricket this season due to injury.

The left-armer, 30, has had a few scans and seen a specialist after feeling soreness in his lower back during the pre-season warm-up at Somerset.

It is hoped a series of injections will settle down the problem.

County head of science and medicine Ben Davies said: “Shants has had a couple of scans so we could get plenty of detail and he’s been to see a specialist.

"He is going to have some injections in his lower back to see if that settles his pain down and then hopefully we can build him up.

“Jack has been managing his back for the last few years. All seamers manage some extent of lower back stiffness and soreness during their career.

“But it came to a point at Taunton where it was too sore for him to bowl.”

Paceman Steve Magoffin is set to return for tomorrow’s County Championship Division One clash with Surrey at the Kia Oval (11am).

Magoffin suffered pain when bowling in the first innings at Somerset and missed the Nottinghamshire defeat as a precautionary measure.

Davies said: “Mags just had a bit of stiffness through his hamstring and lower back at Taunton last week after the first innings.

“We did some work on him, got him recovered properly and he managed to get through 16 overs in the second innings so we know it is not anything too serious.

“But we just wanted to give it every chance to settle so (not playing against Nottinghamshire) was more of a precaution and we just want to get as much cricket out of him as we can this year.

“He’s had a lengthy time off from bowling because of last summer’s injury and we couldn’t get outside a lot in pre-season over here because of the rain.

“He went into the Hampshire game fairly cold but managed to get through a good lot of overs and again against Somerset.”

Promising County paceman George Scrimshaw is making encouraging progress after a lower back injury.

Scrimshaw, part of the ECB Pace Programme last winter, is doing strength and conditioning work and has been running and completing early bowling drills pain-free.

If all goes to plan, the 20-year-old will look to build up his bowling workload in May with a view to returning to action next month.

Burton-born Scrimshaw signed a new three-year deal last May and made his first-team breakthrough in four T20 Blast games.

Davies added: “George has settled down really nicely following a bit of an aggravation of his lower back.

“He has been doing a lot of work with Ross Dewar (strength and conditioning coach) in the gym, just getting all his movements and back to basics right and then building up some strength foundation from there.

“He has been back to running this week pain-free and actually did some walking bowling drills this week, again pain-free.

“Over the next four or five weeks we will be looking to build up his bowling and running workload and just getting him up to scratch so he can bowl in games again.

“Hopefully we will be looking for him to play some second-team cricket in June and just build him up through that and get him available for first-team cricket.

“He went away with the pace programme and when he came back to us and got into full intensity bowling in Abu Dhabi he just had a bit of pain in his lower back but it has settled quite quickly so we can get him going again.”