23rd October 2025
The second of my blogs following up the August Test match between England and India at the Kia Oval reflects on the issue of substitutes in cricket (and some other sports).
The England seam bowler, Chris Woakes, dislocated his left shoulder when diving in the attempt to prevent the ball crossing the boundary during the Indian first innings. His injury meant that he could not take any further part in the match, apart from a short innings at its climax when he courageously took to the crease with his arm in a sling underneath his sweater. My earlier blog discussed the risks attached to this.
There has been some interesting comment on social media about the effect of Woakes’s absence on the Test and on the series as a whole. He was effectively missing for 3½ of the four innings of a game which India won by six runs. A counterfactual argument is that, had he been fit throughout, England would have prevailed – with, as a result, the home side winning the series 3-1 rather than settling for the 2-2 draw. (I have to say that, even in this example, I believe the case for the different outcome to be not proven; by definition, we simply don’t know how the conflict between bat and ball would have been resolved in the alternative scenario).
On balance, I would judge that the social media commentators generally favour cricket’s substitution rule as it currently stands in Test matches: that is, with substitutes allowed to field or keep wicket, but not bat or bowl, apart from covering injuries that are concussive.
For what it’s worth, I am also in this camp, although – as noted below – there is at least one glaring anomaly. However, rather than discuss the pros and cons of extending the grounds for more active substitutions, I shall examine what has happened in one or two other sports in order to ascertain what might have described as the direction of travel regarding the future of cricket substitutes.
Before doing so, a couple of other things, beginning with the anomaly. In the first innings of the Lord’s test match against New Zealand in 2022, the England spin bowler Jack Leach chased a ball to the Pavilion boundary and injured himself in his diving attempt to prevent the four being registered. For all intents and purposes, the cause of his injury was identical to that of Chris Woakes: a misjudged forward dive at full speed at the boundary’s edge whilst attempting to parry the ball back with the hand.
However, the outcome was different. Leach was found to have suffered a concussion. And the result of that was that, whilst he was ruled out of the remainder of the match, England were permitted to play a like-for-like replacement – Matt Parkinson – who bowled 15 overs and took one wicket in the New Zealand second innings. (An unbeaten Joe Root century steered England to victory by five wickets).
The second aside concerns the causes of the Leach and Woakes injuries. Whilst acknowledging their wholehearted commitment to their team’s cause – and recognising that every run saved might be crucial in determining the final outcome of the match – it is also the case that their injuries were self-inflicted when misjudging some part of the required acrobatics when they had a (very) outside chance of preventing the boundary.
In some regards, it is surprising that these injuries do not happen more often. For many fielders, it now seems to be de rigour that there should be a forlorn dive across the boundary rope (or whatever marks the boundary) even when it is perfectly obvious that the ball cannot be overhauled.
I have discussed this with a good friend, whose interest in cricket has extended from earlier than even my 60-plus years. “Something mistakenly macho” is the telling phrase that he used to describe the frequency with which players dive towards the boundary rope, rather than conceding the four runs as the inevitable outcome, as if not to do so would somehow constitute “chickening out”. In these cases, there is no chance of preventing the boundary, but a 100 per cent guarantee of a higher dry-cleaning bill and an “X” per cent chance of sustaining injury.
And so what of the future role of cricket substitutes? I wonder if a little history from elsewhere might be instructive.
In football, the employment of substitutes occurred – unofficially, without formal sanction – in many countries in the inter-war period. However, it was not until the 1965-66 season that they were permitted in English League Football: one per side and only to replace an injured player. Tellingly, two years later, the latter condition was relaxed to allow substitution for tactical reasons. (The first FIFA World Cup finals in which they were used were in Mexico in 1970). As from the 2024-25 season, Premier League teams have been allowed to name 9 substitutes, of whom 5 can be used.
The history of rugby league has many examples of depleted teams holding out against the odds, most famously the Northern Union side in the “Rorke’s Drift” Test match against Australia in Sydney in 1914, in which the visitors were at one stage down to 9 men from the original 13. (They won 14-6 to secure the Ashes). I can recall, from when I started watching the sport in the early 1960s, that it was customary, if at all possible, for injured players to hobble about on the wing to maintain their side’s numbers. Slightly before my time, the tourists’ captain, Alan Prescott, played all but 3 minutes of the Australia-Great Britain test match in Brisbane in 1958 with a broken arm (another GB win, 25-18).
These types of mad heroics were made less likely when substitutes were first permitted in senior rugby league matches in the 1964-65 season. Teams were allowed to replace two injured players in the first half, though the requirement for the player to be injured was abolished a year later. The modern rules – as set out in the 2024 Rugby League International Laws of the Game – are considerably different. Each team may have up to 4 replacements with a maximum of 8 “interchanges” allowed from the 17 named players.
As so often the case, the rugby union authorities followed their league counterparts with a lag. The laws were changed in 1968 for “matches in which a national representative team is playing” in which no more than two players could be replaced “only when, in the opinion of a medical practitioner, the player is so injured that he should not continue playing in the match”. In the same year, Barry John’s replacement by Mike Gibson in the first South Africa vs British Lions Test in Pretoria was the first such occurrence. The introduction of a replacement as a tactical substitute was not formally permitted until 1996.
These days, international rugby union is a game of 23-a-side as it is the norm for most (or indeed all) of the 8 available replacements to feature at some time in the second half of matches. This has produced some new forms of tactical thinking, as illustrated by the South Africans’ current propensity to employ a 6-2 (or even 7-1) division in the forwards/backs components of their replacements’ bench in order maintain the immense physicality on which their rugby strategy is based throughout the full 80 minutes.
These are different sports to cricket, of course. Nonetheless, if one is searching for pointers for the future of cricket substitutions – albeit most likely over the long term – I think there are two clear indicators.
First, it is very difficult to restrict the criteria than permit the use of substitutions. Mission-creep is all but inevitable over time. In all three of the other sports noted here, the restriction of allowing substitutes only for injuries was abolished – in the cases of football and rugby league very quickly – when it was evident that this condition was being abused through the feigning of injury by players (no doubt prompted by coaches and managers). At present, Test match cricket is holding the line with regard to concussion-related (only) injury and this is something that can probably be safeguarded through the use of technical medical examination. Other types of injury – a fast bowler supposedly straining a groin after bowling 6 overs at 90 mph with a like-for-like replacement waiting in the wings – would be more difficult to police.
Second, it is clear that the number of permitted substitutes tends to rise over time: from 1 to 8 in rugby union and (effectively via the interchange) in rugby league and from 1 to 5 in football. There are various factors at work here including the desire of sports authorities to maintain the speed of their games throughout their full duration as well as the need to safeguard players’ welfare when they might otherwise have been obliged to remain on the field when carrying injuries. (All three of the other sports also allow an additional substitution/replacement – for both sides – if a player has to permanently leave the field due to concussion).
Finally, reverting back to cricket, is there a straw in the wind evident in the some of the regulatory changes that have been recently introduced?
Earlier this month, Cricket Australia announced that, in the first five rounds of the current Sheffield Shield competition, teams will be able to replace a player if he sustains an injury or becomes unwell before, during or after play up to the close of play on day two. This would be at the referee’s discretion, the substitution must be like-for-like (such as a bowler for a bowler) and the opposing side would also be able to make a substitution. This followed a trial in the domestic red-ball competition in India earlier this year, though that was limited to injuries sustained on the field that were external, for example a deep cut or fracture rather than a muscle strain.
For the traditionalist, the more worrying development has been the Indian Premier League (IPL)’s “Impact Player rule”, introduced in 2023, which allows for changes that are purely tactical by permitting one substitute player per team (from 5 who are named beforehand) to play an active part in matches with bat or ball. Rather bizarrely, if a bowler, the Impact Player is allowed to bowl his full quota of four overs, irrespective of the number of overs bowled by the player he is replacing.
At present, the Impact Player rule only applies to the T20 format used in the IPL. It is still some distance from the first-class game, including Test cricket. Speaking for myself, I hope it remains there.
An Ordinary Spectator 