Teenage fast bowler Pat Cummins will miss a second consecutive Test summer through injury after being diagnosed with a bone stress injury of the lower back on Friday.

Cummins, who missed all of the Test series last season with a heel complaint, has been plagued with injury in his short career.

Because of his age and his history, Cricket Australia are taking no chances with the young tearaway, putting him in cotton wool for the rest of the domestic season.

“Because of his age and past history, we decided to investigate the source of the pain and, unfortunately, he has an early-stage stress fracture of his spine, confirmed by scans (on Friday),” Australian team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris said in a statement.

“Pat had a spine bone stress injury a few years ago but the current injury is new and in an entirely different part of the spine.

“We expect he will recover fully from this injury and will be closely monitored to determine his return to the playing field, but expect that he will miss most of the 2012-13 domestic cricket season.”

The 19-year-old also picked up a side strain on Australia’s one-day tour of England in June, playing just one game before being sent home.

Over the past 18 months, Cummins has almost exclusively played the shorter forms of the game, picking up his most-recent ailment during the Sydney Sixers’ triumphant Champions League Twenty20 tournament in South Africa.

Before that, he played for Australia in the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka.