Replacement rule 'daft' & 'nonsensical' - Anderson
Lancashire captain and England legend James Anderson has called the regulations around injury replacements in the County Championship "daft" and "nonsensical". The season-long trial allows replacements for injury, illness and significant life events. But Lancashire have twice been left confused by decisions surrounding the replacements they have been permitted.
In their win at Gloucestershire, Tom Bailey was deemed too experienced to be a like-for-like replacement for fellow seamer Ajeet Singh Dale, meaning Ollie Sutton had to be drafted in from a second XI fixture. The following week, Tom Hartley was stopped from being Arav Shetty's replacement for similar reasons. It meant that Shetty, a spin-bowling all-rounder, was replaced by George Bell, a wicketkeeper who bowls some occasional spin.
Replacements have to be sanctioned by the match referee. In the match at Bristol the referee was Peter Such, with Ian Ramage in charge at Chester-le-Street. "I don't know what the protocols are," Anderson said on his Tailenders podcast.
"I think they just check Cricinfo and the stats, to see if the averages are better. "Arav Shetty had really badly broken his thumb in three places and we were told we couldn't replace him with Tom Hartley because he's too experienced. "It seems daft.
Surely the whole reason the replacement thing has been brought in is for situations like that - someone has broken their finger and there is no way they can take part in the rest of the game, and we had a like-for-like replacement there. "It happened to us at Gloucestershire as well. It just feels a bit nonsensical.