OPINION: Cricket needs to get with the times and allow injury replacements

Cricket’s rigidity and refusal to get with the times often has a negative impact on the game, and that was shown again last weekend during the Proteas’ stunning Test win over India in Kolkata.

On an almost unplayable pitch, which is a story in itself, 38 wickets fell in under three days, as the visiting South Africans clinched a 30-run win in a match that saw just 594 runs scored over four innings.

Now hang on a moment, you might be wondering how the Proteas won by 30-runs in a game that saw an average of less than 150-runs per innings, but there were only 38 wickets lost, instead of the expected 40?
And the reason for that is because India only lost nine wickets in each of their innings, of 189 and 93.

How is that possible you may ask? It’s because they played with a batter short after their captain Shubman Gill retired hurt during their first innings and was subsequently ruled out of the rest of the match.

Gill is one of his team’s best batters and retired unbeaten on four after hurting his neck. After going to hospital for tests he never returned to the action.

India, however, could not replace him with a batter, but only a fielder, and in a match in which an innings of just 20 runs could be the difference between winning and losing, not having one of your best batters proves to be a hammer blow.

The fact that in 2025 cricket still hasn’t worked out how to allow like-for-like replacements for injuries is ridiculous, and it is the only major team sport around the world that is not able to cater for it.

What is more perplexing is that the sport’s leaders have allowed concussion replacements under strict guidelines since 2019, and why they can’t follow the same process for injuries is baffling.

Cricket seriously needs to get with the times. The fact that a team can be so heavily impacted by losing a bowler or batter to injury early in a match, and then having to play the rest of it a player short in that department is ridiculous.