KEY POINTS:
Shane Bond will wing his way home prematurely from the Black Caps' cricket tour of South Africa and no doubt any wee germs on the plane will set their sights on the fated-to-be-ill New Zealand fast bowler.
The man is a walking disaster zone. Put it this way: if you wrapped Bondy in cotton wool he'd be guaranteed to break out in an allergic rash.
You could have opened a book on when Bond might have had to quit this tour, but you'd have trouble writing one on a career that is forever stalled in the fast lane.
If all things had been equal in Bond's career, a biography would have been due about now with a snappy little title such as Shane Bond: Bouncing Back.
But six years on from his debut the Canterbury speedster has barely done enough to fill a couple of chapters.
It is difficult to think of another New Zealand sportsman who has delivered so little compared with his enormous potential. In Bond's case, this lack of delivery is due entirely to illness and injury. Back, foot, knee and stomach injuries, viruses, heat stroke ... the full range, as they say. He must have a heck of a time getting travel insurance.
Yes, the just-retired All Black lock Keith Robinson has given Bond a reasonable stumble for his money in the misadventure stakes, but Robinson was never so pivotal to his side's prospects.
With Bond, you can believe that the Black Caps might make cricket tests interesting into the fifth day. Without him, you have visions of opposing batsmen strolling around with double centuries and you make other plans for Monday.
His latest injury, an abdominal tear, continues an astonishing run of form in the accident-prone department. There are blokes who make a living getting blasted out of cannons who have spent less time under medical care.
A Bond-Daniel Vettori pace-spin double act would have been something to savour over the years but it was not to be. What a dreadful shame.
As in the case of Richard Hadlee, Bond's career could have meant so much to so many other careers, and New Zealand cricket as a whole.
We have had so precious few world-class cricketers. Oh, what might have been. Bond could have been one of the great New Zealand sportsmen.
Since his debut at Hobart in the 2001/02 season, Bond has played a mere 17 tests out of 44 but notched a fantastic 79 dismissals at a Hadlee-type average of around 22 runs per wicket.
It's an exceptional strike rate and average even by world standards, and already earns him a spot in New Zealand cricket's cupboard of fame. Bond's one-day performances aren't exactly shabby either. The great shame is that, as Hadlee showed, it is possible to fashion a decent side around one superstar bowler.
There's a temptation to suggest it is hardly worth picking the 32-year-old Cantabrian any more, so often does he break down. But the Black Caps aren't exactly spoiled for choice.
Three overs from Bond can do more damage than three years of Iain O'Brien, so when it comes to the career of New Zealand's best fast bowler, we may as well accept our pleasure in very small doses while the man is prepared to keep hanging in there.
The remarkable thing is that Bond does always bounce back, that despite the frustration and interruptions his form rarely wavers. He's a bloke who hasn't given up, and I suppose the rest of us should have the decency not to give up on him.
But it's hard not to give up hope.
