Astle knee injury another crippling blow for New Zealand

It doesn't pay to be successful in the TelstraClear Black Caps side at the moment - you become a target for the injury gods, and Nathan Astle is the latest victim.

New Zealand's player of the year after his outstanding batting form over the summer Astle, will not play in tonight's second One-Day International against Pakistan and will return home immediately having been diagnosed with a tear in the patella tendon of his left knee.

The extent of the tear is not known and is why he is being flown home to be diagnosed by the New Zealand Cricket medical team.

A precautionary scan has been taken of the knee as the result of Astle experiencing increasing discomfort since the one-day tournament in Sharjah.

New Zealand Cricket's operations manager John Reid said: "We want to get him home for further diagnosis from our medical team and start him on rehabilitation as quickly as possible."

That's operations as in technical administration of New Zealand's Cricket but it might just as well be medical operations manager such has been the attrition rate among the leading New Zealand players since the World Cup of 1999.

Geoff Allott, Chris Cairns, Daniel Vettori, Shayne O'Connor, Dion Nash, Scott Styris, Shane Bond and now Astle have all suffered severe injury setbacks which have drastically reduced New Zealand's capacity to compete as efficiently as it could without such an injury load.

Astle's place in the side is being taken by Mathew Sinclair.

Sinclair had just returned home from Sharjah and will now rejoin the side on Friday. Astle's injury is the perfect opportunity for Sinclair to reclaim his place in the New Zealand Test side after being dropped for the home series against England.