Nothing was going to stop me batting against Warwickshire when it was confirmed my left eye socket was just bruised.

Fortunately, I drank a lot of milk as a kid so have only had one broken bone in my career, despite a lot of scares.

I've had a few X-rays but on most occasions they've given the all-clear.

The one exception was in Cape Town ten years ago, when I suffered a broken thumb while batting for South Africa A against Pedro Collins of West Indies A.

Thankfully that remains the only fracture of my career to date.

I had a scare when I hurt my thumb keeping wicket to Dimitri Mascarenhas against Derbyshire at the Rose Bowl last season but last Sunday was the first time I'd been hit in the face while keeping wicket.

This time it was Michael Carberry's under-rated off spin that did the damege.

I had no chance with the ball that hit me, it was a complete freak. It turned sharply out of the rough created by James Tomlinson's footmarks and then deflected off Jonathan Trott's right pad.

By the time Carbs had completed his follow through and run to check how I was, the bruise was the size of a golf ball and it closed my left eye straight away.

I thought it was broken but thanks to a mixture of ice and anti-inflammatories the swelling came down very quickly and is now just discoloured by the bruising.

We had to wait until Wednesday, when the swelling had gone down sufficiently, for the X-ray that confirmed it was not broken.

But the optometrist also had to check there was no scratch on the eye ball, which was a concern because the ball that hit me was 60 overs old and consequently very dirty and roughed up.

I was not wearing a helmet at the time but will be at Derby for tonight's Pro40 opener against the Worcestershire Royals.

I'll be wearing a Chase Sports short-leg helmet that I've used before but although the eye socket still feels a little fragile I'm still not going to resort to wearing a hockey goalkeeper's mask likeYorkshire's Simon Guy!

My former Hampshire teammate Simon Katich - the Derbyshire captain and temporary coach - has told me the wickets at Derby have played well this season so I don't intend to be over-cautious.

The doctor suggested sitting out for three weeks but even if it was broken I would play at Durham next week.