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.

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.

I am always keen to move the game forward, and see how we can improve it. I was talking to some friends who are not really cricket fans but had heard about Pant’s situation on the second morning. They could not get their heads around the fact that he 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. What we are doing at the moment 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.

My solution would be that 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 – i.e. injuries that can easily be proven by a scan and an independent doctor – then 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.

Clearly the closer you get to the end of the game, the more open to abuse and skulduggery it is. But if the subs are pre-named – batsman for batsman, spinner for spinner, etc. – and managed well by the match referee, I am sure it could be done 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. You can be hit on the head because you have played a short ball really poorly – effectively that you lack skill in that department – and you can be replaced.

“That is a REMARKABLE fifty in the circumstances for India’s vice-captain!” 🎙️

Rishabh Pant brings up fifty with a ridiculous display of timing 👏 pic.twitter.com/WFfv31gIG2

— Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) July 24, 2025

Now, I thought Rishabh’s shot off Chris Woakes on the first day was stupid, and he’d have been better off playing the ball more classically. But it was just dumb luck, pure and simple, that it ended up breaking his foot. Of course the rub of the green does come into Test cricket at the toss and in how overhead conditions change, but in a contest that is so heated, so hard-thought and so professional, I find it very odd that we do not allow a substitute for a very clearly incapacitated player, to retain the competitive balance.

I do think it is important to remember how rare these situations are. I look back at the last few years and the examples that spring to mind are Jimmy Anderson doing his groin at the 2019 Edgbaston Test in the Ashes, and Nathan Lyon tearing his calf at Lord’s four years later. It massively detracts from the contest to see players unable to do their job, and I think our sport could be improved with this simple change.

Remarkable Pant hit 50 on one leg – and the press box rose

Not often does the press box applaud. It is not the done thing. But at least half the press box at Old Trafford clapped when Rishabh Pant, batting in effect on one leg, brought up his 50 in the fourth Test against England – having broken his right foot when he had scored 37.

It was not even a shot which the unique Pant played against England’s captain Ben Stokes, but a silky push which sped the ball to the cover boundary. Normal batsmen would have needed a little follow-through with the willow, but Pant is the complete opposite of normal.

As if Stokes was not a sufficient challenge on one leg, Pant had already hit Jofra Archer for six. A short long-hop it was – and bowlers can do that when Pant is batting because he scrambles minds – but it was still over the very long square boundary that Pant pulled it.

Pant had personally added 17 runs off 28 balls to his overnight 37 by the time he was castled all over the shop by Archer. More importantly, Pant had helped to add 35 runs, turning India’s total into a very competitive 358 on the liveliest pitch (even if this is not saying much) of this series.

A few Test batsmen have returned to the wicket when more badly injured than Pant but not many. He re-appeared on the second morning at Old Trafford at 314-6, marked his guard with his left foot, and added two runs off the eight balls he faced before lunch, both of them hobbled singles.

Australia’s Rick McCosker batted with a broken jaw in the Centenary Test of 1976-77 against England at Melbourne. He would never have passed the concussion Test prescribed now after being hit on the head, helmetless as it was.

Lord Cowdrey, or Colin as he was in 1963, walked out to bat with a broken arm in the Lord’s Test against West Indies, though he did not actually face a ball, while Malcolm Marshall, with a broken thumb, scored a boundary with one hand against England at Headingley in 1984.

But nobody injured has resembled Pant, if only because nobody when fit has resembled Pant, the most maverick of Test cricketers to date.

Never mind that the injury was self-inflicted to all intents – any sensible person would not have tried to reverse-sweep Chris Woakes. Still, it was a valiant act when he hobbled out half-an-hour before lunch on day two, his right shoe bigger and more substantially padded than his left. Fainter hearts would not have fancied a bat against Stokes operating at full throttle in grey light.

Pant had scored 37 off 48 balls before being carted off to hospital on the first evening, his right foot broken. Chivalrously – and there is a distinct chivalrous streak in Stokes – England’s captain pitched the last three balls of his over fullish and widish. Pant had no runner of course: that gentleman’s agreement was abused so often that runners are forbidden now in the professional sport.

Before the lunch interval, Pant managed to hobble a single when he forced a ball square off Stokes: it would have been two had he been able to run. He somehow pushed another single square of the wicket off Brydon Carse, taking him to 39, before reverting to type and trying his first yahoo.

What makes Pant attempt these shots, shots which normal batsmen never attempt in a Test match, even in this era of T20? He might get bored easily: a few dot balls and he indulges in something outrageous. Often a rationale lurks beneath the surface: it was predictable that Carse was going to bowl outside off stump, so a yahoo was a free hit, which Pant happened to miss. But the next ball from Carse was similar, if not identical, and Pant chose to let it pass through to the wicketkeeper.

The essential key to Pant being the inimitable Pant is that he is an all-rounder with the licence that his role involves. He can always do a good job for his side by keeping wicket, if he happens to get himself out to something wild – like the shot in the Test series in Australia last winter which had the watching Sunil Gavaskar shouting: “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

If anyone today comes close to Pant in the ambitiousness of his strokes, it has to be England’s Harry Brook. Some of his shot-selection in the third Test at Lord’s was Pant-ian, but it did not get him beyond 23. And for all his attempts at medium-pace, he is no all-rounder.

Joe Root has an imp on his shoulder, but he has kept it under control since being castigated for a reverse-sweep in India against, of all bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah. He only indulges his impulse now when England are in control of a game. And before helmets, nobody was insane enough to attempt such shots as Pant did on the opening day at Old Trafford when he swept Archer.

The right balance between risk and reward, in Pant’s case, would probably have been if he had played normally against England’s pace bowlers, including Woakes, and gone after the spinners Liam Dawson and Root.

Method does lie in Pant’s apparent madness. If he is injured in the course of executing some of the most astonishing shots that Test cricket has ever seen – if he suffers an impact injury, that is – then he can be replaced when the time arrives for India to field. In this instance he handed over to Dhruv Jurel, by common consent the better wicketkeeper.