Injuries are a part of the game; injury substitutes are unnecessary

Had England won the final Test at the Oval, it is possible that without facing a single delivery, their No.11 might have emerged as hero. Chris Woakes walking out gingerly, his left arm in a sling hidden under his sweater was already one of the heroic sights of the series; at Old Trafford Rishabh Pant had dragged his fractured foot to the crease.

Pant swung Pant-like, and played the shot of the series when he appeared to push Ben Stokes delicately to cover only for the ball to race to the boundary like a tracer bullet, as Ravi Shastri would say.

Players injured during the course of a match returning to the action are the stuff of folklore. Colin Cowdrey, arriving at the crease with his arm in a sling, Anil Kumble bowling to and dismissing Brian Lara with his jaw wired up are justly in that pantheon.

Substitute fielders were always allowed in the laws of the game, and till recently substitute runners too for injured batters. Then, following the death of Phil Hughes on the cricket field, a concussion substitute was allowed to bat or bowl. The runner for batters, however, was not allowed. Following the heroics of Pant and Woakes, there has been a cry for substitutes who could replace players injured.

Contrasting views

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has called cricket a ‘dinosaur’ game for not allowing injury substitutes, claiming this “devalues the product”. He went on to say — and this may be the nub — “It cost England the series because England got to within six runs of beating India with ten players.”

On the other hand, current captain Ben Stokes argues that the injury substitute is unnecessary. If someone gets injured, its tough luck. Deal with it, he says, adding that there may be room for manipulation if an injury substitute is allowed.

Few international cricketers go through a career without injuries. These are part of the game, like sixes and dogs running onto the field. Wicketkeepers finish with crooked fingers, fast bowlers’ backs rebel within a few years, and often in only their 40s, players develop dodgy knees, and carry other evidence of their harsh sporting life.

The law on substitutes (Law 2) is one of the trickier ones. It has been manipulated in the past. In his autobiography, Imran Khan has written about a match in Pakistan in the 1980s, where one of the teams, realising the nature of the wicket substituted players after lunch and a whole session of play had been gone through!

Nearly a century before that, when the Lancashire captain Archie Maclaren allowed Sussex to substitute a fast bowler who fell ill after three overs, he was berated by Wisden for setting up a “very dangerous precedent.” Cricket is a tough game.

The intriguing case of a substitute who took a wicket occurred in 1982. After fast bowler Gladstone Small had already bowled 15 over for Warwickshire against Lancashire, he was called up for England duty as standby. Manager David Brown (who was 40 and had played 26 Tests for England) was given special permission to take Small’s place in the eleven.

Brown dismissed wicketkeeper Christopher Scott. The story doesn’t end there. Small was not needed by England, then returned to bat, and bowled eleven overs in the second innings.

This may not have been the manipulation Stokes had in mind when he said he was against the idea of an injury substitute (or, as in this case, a ‘national call’ substitute). But he has a point. Would England have won the Lord’s Test if Vaughan’s Law had existed, and Shoaib Bashir (who got the last wicket bowling with a fractured finger) had made way for an injury substitute?

Cricket is a game of pressure, and injuries add to the degree of difficulty. It is not just the romance of the fallen hero rising to a challenge — although as Pant and Woakes showed, there is that too.

There is too the danger of batters and fielders becoming that bit more reckless in their approach knowing if they are injured, a substitute will do their job. The modern player (Stokes) I think is right, while the ex-player (Vaughan), who sees cricket as a “product” has got it wrong.