John Hastings Returns to Australia After Sustaining Foot Injury in England
Jan 13, 2019 at 4:22 PM
A foot injury has cut short John Hastings’ stint with English county Worcestershire, as the Australia fast-bowler has returned home.
The 31-year-old experienced pain in his foot while playing against Sussex in Division 2 and an MRI scan has revealed some inflammation and stress in one of the bones in his foot. He has now returned to Australia to further assess the extent of the injury.
“We sent him for an MRI scan which shows some inflammation through the foot and some stress through a certain bone in his foot,” Ben Davies, Worcestershire’s Head of Medicine and Science said.
Hastings has performed impressively for Worcestershire this season, picking up 16 wickets in addition to scoring 139 runs in Division 2. He also made a big impact in the T20 blast, taking eight wickets and scoring a 20-ball 51 against Warwickshire.
Hastings returning to Australia after suffering foot injury https://t.co/akWm076EPP pic.twitter.com/XzAhXOAtaX
— Worcestershire CCC (@WorcsCCC) August 9, 2017
“Cricket Australia have got international cricket coming up [and] they want John back in their care and will be hoping to get him fit and available for selection,” said Worcestershire Director of Cricket Steve Rhodes.
“We’ll certainly look at alternatives. In the past, we’ve brought in Miguel Cummins, Kemar Roach and Shannon Gabriel but the West Indies are here this year. So we’ve just got the find the right one because we’re desperate to go up,” he added.
New Zealand all-rounder Mitchell Santner, who was signed up by Worcestershire for T20 Blast, can be a possible replacement for the Championship.
Hastings, meanwhile, was troubled by injury last year too when he suffered a career-threatening knee injury in the Sheffield Shield match against Tasmania. He had undergone a surgery on his right knee to reconstruct a tendon and had missed the later half of the last season.
Prior to the injury, he was surprisingly dropped for the Chappell-Hadlee ODI series against New Zealand despite taking 29 wickets in the 50-over format in 2016. But earlier this year, he made a return to the side during the ICC Champions Trophy.