London: Sachin Tendulkar is making a rapid recovery after his shoulder surgery and could be fit for the tour of the West Indies starting later next month, according to his doctor Andrew Wallace.

“Surgery was fairly straightforward. He’s made an excellent recovery. I expect he will be back for India some time in the very near future,” said Dr Wallace, who operated upon the star batsman on Monday.

Sachin, who suffered a tear on his shoulder, will miss the ongoing seven-match one-day series against England but his availability for the tour of the West Indies, where the first one-dayer begins on May 18, is still under cloud.

The batting maestro underwent an arthroscopic surgery to stabilise his right shoulder joint and reattach his biceps.

Wallace said the 32-year-old player had only been in discomfort while throwing and neither his batting nor bowling was affected by the injury.

“His batting was not affected and most of the shoulder does not take too much of the force when bowling. It’s a common injury in baseball pitchers and tennis players ? anyone who is doing a lot of overhead throwing,” he said.

“The rim of the socket had become a little bit frayed so the ball was sliding out the back of the joint a little bit. It opened up a small tear in the labrum. A little bit of fluid was escaping through that tear and created a cyst.

“The main reason for operating was that the cyst was slowly enlarging so we felt it was timely to do it now before we felt there was any danger,” he said.

Meanwhile, former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram on Saturday said the latest injury had made Sachin vulnerable to the bowlers who would fancy their chances against the champion batsman more than before, says another report from Karachi.

“Sachin’s shoulder injury is more serious than it looks. The more time he will spend out of cricket, the more he would look vulnerable and likewise each time the bowlers would come to bowl at him, they would fancy their chances more than ever,” Akram, who played 104 Tests and 356 one-day Internationals, said.

“When I used to ball at Sachin during my heydays, I was always thinking. But in the last two series (against Pakistan and England), I have seen Sachin get out to very ordinary deliveries. There was no footwork, no approach and no timing. So something is terribly wrong somewhere and that needs to be fixed very quickly by none other than Sachin himself,” observed Akram, who took 414 Tests and 502 one-day wickets.

“Obviously when you are carrying an injury, you don’t feel very comfortable but you have to sort your problems out before taking the field.

“I understand that Sachin doesn’t have the same pressures as he had five years back because today Indian team has dependable Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh but Sachin has a big reputation to look after,” said the left-arm legend.

Akram, however, believed Sachin had at least one good year of cricket left in him.