England will admit, maybe not publicly, that Harshit Rana for Shivam Dube was not the problem

Harshit Rana was reconciled to time on the sidelines and an extended wait for his Twenty20 International debut when a blow to the head sustained by Shivam Dube unexpectedly earned him his maiden cap on Friday night.

Rana made an instant impact as a concussion sub, firing out Liam Livingstone, then Jacob Bethell and eventually Jamie Overton with the last ball of his spell to finish with excellent figures of three for 33. Alongside Ravi Bishnoi’s three for 28 and another grand night for the spinners in Pune – India’s three-pronged spin attack finished with six for 82 from 11 overs – it helped the hosts complete a stirring 15-run win to extend their unbeaten run in T20Is in home soil to a whopping 17 series.

That should have been that, until England – through former skippers Kevin Pietersen and Michael Vaughan and current captain Jos Buttler – questioned the induction of Rana for Dube, insisting that this wasn’t a ‘like-for-like’ replacement.

The ‘like-for-like’ clause is an interesting one because it seems to suggest that if an all-rounder goes out, another all-rounder must come in, if so available. The extension of that suggestion, therefore, was that since Ramandeep Singh was on the bench, he ought to have been Dube’s replacement, not Rana who is an out-and-out bowler.

But ‘like-for-like’ is more when it comes to resources than personnel or nomenclature. India would have realistically expected Dube to bowl – maybe not all his four allocated overs, but at least a couple – and Ramandeep is more of a late-order muscler of the cricket ball than a bowler. In 66 T20s, Ramandeep has bowled only 276 deliveries – that’s about 4.2 balls per game, whereas Dube averages 7.5 balls per outing (1,147 in 154 matches). India’s logic when they proffered Rana’s name as concussion sub to match referee Javagal Srinath was that they needed a bowling resource to make up for the absence of Dube the bowler. Had, for instance, Dube been injured if India were bowling first and needed a concussion sub, then Ramandeep would have stepped in to offer the batting expertise Dube’s absence would have demanded. But since India needed to fill in for Dube the bowler and Ramandeep isn’t a bowler beyond the loosest definition of the word, the nearest ‘like-for-like’ was Rana.

Things might have been different had England won

Admittedly, there seems some ambiguity when viewed from a wide-angled perspective but when one narrows things down, it is clear that the rules were neither bent nor broken, however tempting it might be to assume so mainly because Rana had such an impact on the outcome. Neither would England have raised the issue nor would anyone else have given it a second thought if, despite Rana’s heroics, the visitors had gotten home or if Rana had had an anonymous outing and England had still lost. It is essential always to take emotion out of the picture in such cases and perhaps when the dust settles and England realise that they were undone more by their issues with the turning ball, they will acknowledge within their group, if not publicly, that Rana for Dube isn’t as much of a talking point as they might initially have made it out to be.

The concussion sub is still a work in progress and as new and varied scenarios crop up, it will assist in the learning and rejigging process, just as the experience at the 50-over World Cup final in 2019 which England won against New Zealand on boundary countback did after the match ended in a tie in both regulation time and in the tie-breaking Super Over.

The use of the concussion sub will raise hackles from time to time, depending on how efficacious the said replacement is. Australia were furious when India swapped Ravindra Jadeja with Yuzvendra Chahal in the first of three T20Is between the teams in Canberra in December 2020. Left-arm spinner Jadeja had picked up a hamstring injury while batting, got pinged on the helmet by Mitchell Starc in India’s last over and didn’t come out to field when Australia chased 162 for victory. With the ball turning a mile, India used leggie Chahal as Jadeja’s concussion sub, much to Australia’s ire because their contention was that Jadeja’s head injury was an excuse, that he was being subbed only because of the hamstring injury.

Head coach Justin Langer had a long pow-wow by David Boon, the match referee, who stuck by his decision to allow Chahal to come on as the concussion sub. Chahal took three for 25 to bowl India to an 11-run win and take home the Player of the Match award. If leggie Chahal was a ‘like-for-like’ replacement for all-rounder Jadeja, then surely, pacer Rana can be the same for all-rounder Dube, right?