The injury to Rishabh Pant in the recent fourth Test between England and India in Manchester has given rise to the question of whether the time has come for cricket to embrace the idea of introducing injury substitutions.

Pant valiantly batted in India's first innings, despite fracturing his foot, but has been ruled out of the upcoming fifth and final Test of the series.

The idea that teams should be permitted to substitute an injured player during a game has received support from players like Sunil Gavaskar, Gautam Gambhir, and Michael Vaughan. An injury substitute's participation is now restricted to fielding only. A like-for-like replacement is allowed in the event of a concussion, though, and the substitute is also authorized to bowl and bat.

India head coach Gambhir sees nothing wrong with changing the rules if it’s clear that a player has suffered a major injury.

“Absolutely, I’m all for it. If the umpires and the match referee see and feel that it 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 with 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 had to play with 10 men against 11. How unfortunate would this be for us?” Gambhir said in the post-match press conference.  

However, England captain Ben Stokes thinks it’s a ‘ridiculous conversation’ and needs to be ‘shut down.’ He feels that teams could exploit the rule.

“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. You pick your 11 for a game; injuries are part of the game. I completely understand the concussion replacement: player welfare and 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 say, ‘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," Stokes stated in the presser.