Leach banged his left knee while diving during the first Test victory at Hyderabad and was subsequently ruled out of the series
Jack Leach is to undergo surgery on the knee injury that ended his tour of India.
Leach, who has been enormously unfortunate with injury and illness for much of his international career, banged his left knee while diving during the first Test victory at Hyderabad.
He was subsequently ruled out of the remainder of the series.
The left-arm spinner, who was returning from a stress fracture of the back that kept him out of the summer Ashes series, revealed the news while speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live.
"I'm going to have an operation to get the rest of the swelling out because it's not budging," he said.
"It was quite an unfortunate one. It was the second ball of the first innings in the field so that whole game I was playing with this knee problem.
"I obviously knocked it a few times throughout that game, and it has just created a long period of recovery.
Leach presented Shoaib Bashir with his maiden Test cap (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
"I need to get the operation done and then hopefully I can get back to playing cricket. I'd love to have a run of playing cricket and getting into a bit of a rhythm again and hopefully that can happen again once I've got this sorted."
In the absence of England's most experienced spinner, youngsters Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir and Rehan Ahmed have all impressed.
Even with his injury in the first Test, though, Leach was still able to take the key wicket of Shreyas Iyer during the run-chase, despite the heavy strapping on his leg and his obvious discomfort.
"It's a big shame for us, a big shame for Jack, obviously after a long time out of the game with his back," said Ben Stokes after Leach was first ruled out.
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