Chris Woakes’ agony was laudable and lamentable – sport must have its limits

Modern sportsmen and women are vocal about fixture congestion and physical and psychological strain. In today’s sporting perma-calendar those cries for help elicit sympathy. Live action never sleeps.

But we can’t have it both ways. We can’t on the one hand demand greater protection and then applaud the valour of one-armed and one-legged batters forced, by Test cricket’s aversion to substitutes, to leave the treatment room and return to the bearpit.

Pant could barely move at the crease at Old Trafford when returning with a fractured bone and Woakes emerged at the Oval like someone patched up after a train crash. The question rang out: what if either is hit by a ball travelling at 90mph at the point of the original damage, or falls over on it, as the lopsided Woakes might have?

Both were sitting ducks. And each was there because Test cricket doesn’t trust itself to allow substitutions except for concussion. In other words because it can’t be sure of its own honesty.

The case against subs is that teams would abuse the system and find ways to strengthen the side in mid-Test by replacing a bowler with a batter or vice versa. It was ultimately the fear of chicanery therefore that forced Pant and Woakes to bat again when a doctor with the power to do so would have signed them off in minutes.

The International Cricket Council voting for risk to avoid devising and imposing a fair replacement system is a curious mindset for any sport.

Ben Stokes was too badly impaired at Old Trafford to play at the Oval and stepped down. Woakes was too badly wounded at the Oval to continue but was forced to carry on anyway because England hadn’t grabbed their chance to win the series. Keep calm and carry arm.

Sport has “previous” for subverting substitution rules that were meant to keep people safe. In rugby union’s “Bloodgate” scandal in 2009 the 25 year-old Harlequins wing Tom Williams bit on a fake blood capsule so the fly-half Nick Evans could be brought back on for a shot at a drop-goal.

Concussion subs date from 2019 when Steve Smith was smashed on the back of the head by a 92mph Jofra Archer bouncer, passed an initial concussion test, but then felt as groggy as if he’d “had a dozen beers”. Marnus Labuschagne was allowed to take his place. Injured players can be replaced in the field. Only concussion subs are allowed to bowl and bat.

The price for not allowing like-for-like switches in extreme circumstances is paid not only by the teams but by spectators. In football, a “harsh” red card unleashes howls about “ruined spectacles”. In Test cricket everyone seems to accept numerical distortion as just bad luck.

Stokes thinks the idea of injury replacements is “absolutely ridiculous” and says: “The conversation should be shut down.” His belief is that there would be “too many loopholes for teams to be able to go through. You pick your 11 for a game, and injuries are a part of the game. I understand concussion replacement, that’s player welfare.”

But he was wrong to suggest “inflammation around a knee” in an MRI scan could allow management to pull a fast one. This isn’t about wear and tear but protecting the incapacitated from further harm. India’s coach Gautam Gambhir is in the opposing camp. “Absolutely, I’m all for it,” he said at the Oval.

Woakes and Pant weren’t victims of attrition. Pant was hit on the foot attempting a sweep and had a bump on the impact point the size of a small egg. Woakes dislocated his shoulder diving over the boundary rope. “The pain came on pretty quickly and my arm was just hanging there,” he told the Guardian this week. “It was grim and my thoughts were racing. ‘Is it game over? Is it career done?’ It was a horrible place to be.”

The next bit was hellish, as Anita Biswas, the team doctor tried to lever his shoulder back in. “We thought we had it in with a ‘clunk’ but then my pectoral muscle spasmed and rejected it,” he said. “That was horrendous. Another 10 minutes or so, with her knee in my armpit, there was another ‘clunk’ and it was back in properly.”

That was Thursday. On Monday, the ban on injury subs pinned on him the job of rescuing England from six dropped catches in India’s second innings and a batting collapse that featured several shots that were daft in the context of a two-day run chase.

Watching him walk out like Colin Cowdrey with his broken arm in the 1963 Lord’s Test was laudable and lamentable. There are meant to be limits: a line where further harm is guarded against.

Woakes injured himself on day one. On day two, England ruled him out of the rest of the match. Yet that same day he asked coach Brendon McCullum: “Do you want me to bat [in England’s first innings]?”

McCullum said no because his senior bowler was “in an immense amount of pain”. Respect to Woakes for his selflessness. How the Oval cheered when he strode out like Colin Cowdrey. But cricket ought to have said no to him again three days after McCullum first did.

Photograph by Stu Forster/Getty Images