Former and current England players are furious with the umpires for allowing Harshit Rana as a concussion substitute for Shivam Dube in the fourth T20I in Pune. Dube, who plays as a batter, took a blow on the helmet in the final over of the team’s innings. He suffered a concussion, and the decision-makers allowed India to bring in Rana, who ended up taking three wickets as the hosts registered a 15-run victory to clinch the series.
Dube, who had earlier scored a fifty, couldn’t take the field, and when Rana took the England skipper’s catch, the visiting camp looked angry. Buttler was miffed and said something about Harshit in the dugout. He also refused to accept him as a like-to-like replacement in the post-match press conference. He called the young player a pacer while highlighting that Shivam was playing primarily as a batter.
Harsha Bhogle took to social media to talk about the depth of Indian cricket, but his comment didn’t go well with Michael Vaughan.
“Has there ever been so much depth in Indian T 20 cricket,” Harsha Bhogle wrote.
“Especially when you can replace a batter with a bowler,” Michael Vaughan commented.
According to the ICC rules, a like-to-like replacement is allowed in the case of a concussion across formats. However, the teams have been using the rule to their advantage by bringing in players who are not the right replacements. If the team is chasing, a specialist batter is added, even if a bowler is down. In case of defending a total, a bowler is given a chance in place of the batter.
It is upto the ICC to make a decision on the rule and stop the team from bending it in their favor.
