LONDON: Injured India batter Rishabh Pant’s brave fifty with a broken foot in the fourth Test against England was “great theatre” but it also showed “cricket is in dark ages” on the issue of allowing medical substitutes, feels former England captain Michael Vaughan.
Pant remarkably came out to bat with a fractured foot in the morning session on Thursday after retiring hurt the previous day, and went on to add 17 runs to his overnight 37 for his 18th Test fifty.
“I have felt for many years that Test cricket should introduce substitutes for injuries that are clear and obvious, like we have seen with Rishabh Pant in the fourth Test at Old Trafford,” Vaughan wrote in his column for ‘The Telegraph’.
“It was great theatre watching Pant come out to bat with a broken foot on the second morning. It was unbelievable courage, and there was some amazing skill to scramble 17 runs from 28 balls. But he was not fit to bat, could not run, and could have made the injury so much worse.”
…the fact that he (Pant) was allowed to have a replacement as wicketkeeper, but not to bat or bowl. It is all a bit odd, and inconsistent. We are the only team sport that does this and it is an example of cricket being stuck in the dark ages, I think.”
He felt sticking to the old rules “is intentionally depleting a contest by making one of the teams effectively play with 10 men for four days of the match, on the back of bad luck”.
On a possible solution for such eventualities, the former England batter said, “If a player suffers a new injury such as a broken bone or pulls a muscle so badly that they cannot play a further part in the game — injuries that can easily be proven by a scan and an independent doctor — they can be replaced by a like-for-like substitute after two innings of the match.
“Before the match, each player could have an allocated replacement for both injuries and concussion, pre-approved by both teams. There would be some logistical issues, more for the home team than the tourists, who tend to have a bigger group of players at the venue. But it is not insurmountable.”
He admitted that replacement rules are “more open to abuse” closer to the end of a game, but if the substitutes are pre-named — batsman for batsman, spinner for spinner — and managed well by the match referee, it could be handled very well.
“I take concussion very seriously and applaud the game for bringing in subs for it a few years ago. But I do find it bizarre that that is the only reason you can have a sub.
Write more, thaats all I have to say. Literally, it sems as
though you relied on tthe video to make your point. You clearly know what youre taloking about, why throw away your
intelligence on just posting videos to your blog when you
could be giving us something informative to read?
My page … https://www.fapjunk.com