Ben Stokes Blasts 'Ridiculous' Injury Sub Idea But Gautam Gambhir 'All For It'
Has the time come for cricket to embrace the idea of introducing injury substitution? Well, the cricket world is a divided house with strong arguments emerging from either half.
The likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Gautam Gambhir and Michael Vaughan have thrown their weights behind the suggestion that teams be allowed to replace an injured player during the course of a match, but England captain Ben Stokes thinks it's a 'ridiculous conversation' and needs to be 'shut down'.
The debate has been triggered after Rishabh Pant broke his foot on the opening day of the recently concluded 4th Test between India and England. Pant retired out and returned to bat on the next day but was clearly struggling. He didn't keep wickets with India replacing him with Dhruv Jurel.
Current rules limit the participation of an injury substitute to just fielding. However, in case of concussion, a like-to-like- replacement is permitted with the sub allowed to bat and bowl as well.
India head coach Gambhir sees nothing wrong with changing the rules if it's clear that a player has suffered major injury.
'Absolutely, I'm all for it," Gambhir said. 'If the umpires and the match referee sees and feels that is a major injury, I think it's very important. It's very important to have this rule where you can get a substitute – that is, if it's very visible. There's nothing wrong in doing that, especially in a series like this where it's been such a closely-fought series in the previous three Test matches. Imagine if we would've had to play with 10 men against 11. How unfortunate would this be for us."
However, England Test captain Stokes feels that teams could exploit the rule.
'I think it's absolutely ridiculous that there's a conversation around an injury replacement," Stokes said. 'I think that there would just be too many loopholes for teams to be able to go through. You pick your 11 for a game; injuries are part of the game. I completely understand the concussion replacement: player welfare, player safety. But I think the conversation should just honestly stop around injury replacements because if you stick me in an MRI scanner, I could get someone else in straightaway.
'If you stick anyone else with an MRI scanner, a bowler is going to show, 'Oh yeah, you've got a bit of inflammation around your knee. Oh sweet, we can get another fresh bowler in'. I just think that conversation should be shut down and stopped," he added.
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First Published:
July 28, 2025, 10:49 IST
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