John Hastings, the Australia and Kolkata Knight Riders allrounder, has been ruled out of the rest of the IPL season as he has returned home with an ankle injury. Hastings hurt himself during the warm-ups before Knight Riders' match against Mumbai Indians last week. He went on to bowl his quota, and was the most economical bowler from his side who failed to defend 187.

"He bowled through a fair bit of pain," Simon Katich, Knight Riders' assistant coach, said. "He had a fair bit of scans after that, and he has flown back to Australia. It's a shame to see his campaign end prematurely. He had fitted in really well into the team, and he had performed well in a couple of games. Yeah, unfortunately he'll be doing a lot of rehab instead and working towards getting fit for the West Indies tour for Australia."

Knight Riders are in talks with a replacement, whose name they will disclose only after the IPL technical committee has cleared the paperwork. "We have looked into it," Katich said. "We have sent off the paperwork. Nothing has been confirmed regarding the player concerned. Hopefully that'll happen in the next few days. We have sent out the paperwork to BCCI, we'll just have to see what happens."

When pushed further about the replacement's identity, Katich did say they had always been interested in the said player. "It's someone that we had already looked at in the auction," he said. "Obviously, we did get John. He [Hastings] was right up there on the priority list when we went for the auctions. We didn't know if it was going to come through or not so we had a few other names in mind. We'll find out if it comes through."

(ESPN)