1 month ago
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Everyone understands the argument that cricket should allow teams to make substitutes for more than just concussion. The current system risks making the game look anachronistic. It risks tilting a game against a team through sheer bad luck.
But change the system and you lose the potential for something exceptional happening. Change the system and you no longer get Rick McCosker scoring 25 with a broken jaw and a face swathed in bandages in the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1977.
Change the system and you no longer get Colin Cowdrey coming out to bat at Lord’s against West Indies with his left arm in plaster in 1963. Change the system and you deprive the spectators who crowded into Old Trafford on the second day of the fourth Test of a spectacle they will never forget.
Stairs lead down from the team dressing rooms to the outfield. They were Rishabh Pant’s first test and as he struggled down them, wincing with pain, a gasp of surprise travelled around the ground and lent a different hue to a grey morning.
Pant hobbled slowly out to the middle, limping heavily, as the crowd gave him a standing ovation. The rumour had been that he was to miss the rest of the series with a broken right foot after being hit on it, attempting to sweep Chris Woakes, the previous day.
The BCCI had been coy about the extent of his injury when they released a statement on Thursday morning. ‘Rishabh Pant…will not be performing wicket-keeping duties for the remainder of the match,’ it read. ‘Despite his injury, Rishabh Pant has joined the team on Day 2 and will be available to bat as per team requirements.’
Rishabh Pant defied a foot injury as he came out to bat again for India on the second day of the fourth Test
There were gasps when Pant struggled down from the dressing room to head out to bat
Pant was given a standing ovation as he came out to bat amid reports he had a broken foot
And here he was, defiant and unbowed. Pant loves theatre. He has been the showman extraordinaire of this compelling summer of cricket, and the role of wounded hero, the man playing through pain to help his country, was the one he was born to play.
It is already part of his identity, anyway. He suffered serious injuries in a car crash in December 2022 that nearly cost him his life and left many wondering if he would play cricket again. His return was hailed as a triumph against all odds.
His appearance, against all expectations, on Thursday morning, with India 314 for six, burnished his legend. Nor did he disappoint. The spectacle that unfolded was part-comedy, part-bravado, part-innings but as Pant hung around and the scoreboard ticked over, England stopped seeing the funny side of it.
Pant, resuming on his previous day’s score of 37 from 48 balls, exuded a curious kind of energy. He could only limp slowly between the wickets and, for the first couple of overs, England indulged him. Then they started to try to run him out and somehow, it felt a bit mean.
It felt a bit like a motorist blaring his horn at an old man with a cane for taking too long on a zebra crossing. Sometimes, Washington Sundar, Pant’s batting partner, seemed to forget his injury and called for a quick single before remembering and relenting.
Washington fell before Pant, caught at long leg hooking Ben Stokes. Next to go was Anshul Kamboj, Stokes’s fifth victim. Still Pant soldiered on, keeping the strike, protecting Jasprit Bumrah from the England fast bowling.
It had become clear, as soon as Pant returned to the crease, that he could not move his feet to the pitch of the ball. That did not stop him hoisting a giant six over deep square-leg off the bowling of Jofra Archer and stretching for a wider ball from Stokes that he guided through the covers for four.
That brought up his half-century, one of the more remarkable landmarks in Test history, and, once again, the ground rose to him as he lifted his bat above his shoulder. The Indian journalists in the press box stood to applaud him, too. England were becoming increasingly frustrated by this latest grand cameo of an injured cricketer.
It became clear early on that Pant would only be able to limp between the wickets
It had become clear on Pant's return to the crease that he could not move his feet to the pitch of the ball
That did not stop him hoisting a giant six over deep square-leg off the bowling of Jofra Archer and stretching for a wider ball from Stokes that he guided through the covers for four
His resistance eventually came to an end to a magnificent ball from England's Archer
Joe Root shook Pant's hand as he limped back off after reaching a remarkable half-century
Michael Vaughan was among those unimpressed by the spectacle, stating that Pant was 'not fit to bat'
It took a magnificent ball from Archer to bring it all to an end. It beat the edge of Pant’s bat and sent his off-stump cart-wheeling through the air so spectacularly that, when it landed, it stuck in the turf like a javelin. In the second half of his interrupted innings, Pant had scored 17 runs from 27 balls.
As he hobbled off, he was given his third standing ovation of the day. Joe Root shook his hand as he limped towards the pavilion and, as he got to the foot of the steps, the incoming batsman, Mohammed Siraj, stopped to clap him, too.
Not everyone was impressed by the spectacle. ‘He was not fit to bat,’ former England captain Michael Vaughan wrote, ‘could not run, and could have made the injury so much worse…We are the only team sport that does this and it is an example of cricket being stuck in the dark ages.’
Vaughan has a point. And it was clear from the debate which Pant’s injury prompted that many agree with him. But there is also much to celebrate in difference. So much of sport is homogenous and sterilised and if, very occasionally, cricket’s rules create a scenario like Thursday, that is to be savoured.
Sport, surely, is about facing down adversity. It is about dealing with its unfairness. It is also about the joy of the spectacle. Introduce wider substitutions in cricket and the magic that unfolded at Old Trafford, the sight of Rishabh Pant walking out to bat with a broken foot and hitting a six off Jofra Archer, would have been lost. And that would have been a crying shame.
