'Absolutely Ridiculous': Gautam Gambhir And Ben Stokes At Loggerheads Over Injury Replacements Rule in Test Cricket

IND vs ENG: Workload and injury management has increasingly become a matter of huge debate in the modern-day game. There are no questions about the amount of cricket the players play, which includes both franchise and international cricket. A five-match Test series is always a tough challenge for the players and it requires a lot of workload management to keep the key players fit so that they can play through the entire series.

With four completed Test matches, both India and England have a couple of injury and fitness issues to address. India have already lost the services of Rishabh Pant and in all probability, he might end up missing the final Test match of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series. There are eyeballs on Ben Stokes' fitness too, who looked in all sorts of discomfort on the final day of the Manchester Test.

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Gautam Gambhir And Ben Stokes Stand Divided On Injury Replacement Issue

After Rishabh Pant's freak injury in the Manchester Test, the debate around games having an injury replacement has picked up pace. Pant ended up fracturing his right foot on the first day of the Manchester Test and later Dhruv Jurel had to keep wickets for India in the fourth Test. Ben Stokes recently spoke about the possibility of introduction of the injury replacement rule and said that the discussion on this matter should stop right away.

'I think it's absolutely ridiculous that there's a conversation around an injury replacement. I think that there would just be too many loopholes for teams to be able to go through. The conversation should just honestly stop around injury replacements', said Stokes after the completion of the Manchester Test.

India Head Coach Gautam Gambhir had a very different approach to the matter and he expressed the fact that it is completely unfair for a team to lose a man for the entirety of the Test match. 'Absolutely, I'm all for it. If the umpires and the match referee sees and feels that is a major injury, I think it's very important. There's nothing wrong in doing that, imagine if we would've had to play with 10 men against 11. How unfortunate would this be for us', said the India Head Coach.

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Here's What The ICC Rules Say

Prior to 2017, the International Cricket Council (ICC) did not allow teams to have a substitute wicketkeeper, but the rules have now changed and hence, it allowed Jurel to keep wickets for India in Manchester. Additionally, the wicketkeeping-sub isn't allowed to bat. The ICC only allows teams to rope in a replacement player if there is a case of concussion or a player contracts COVID-19.