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."

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) could decide to alter the regulations around replacements after the first block of County Championship fixtures is concluded. Each team has two more games before the competition breaks for the T20 Blast.

During those two rounds of matches, match referees will speak to the directors of cricket at the 18 counties to gain feedback on the trial. The ECB wrote to counties this week to confirm they will be consulted.

The governing body has stressed that the new regulations are a trial, and it will learn each time the rules are applied. The protocols for selecting a replacement player are not new - substitutions for concussions and cases of Covid were in place before this season.

The International Cricket Council has permitted trials for injury replacements to take place in domestic cricket, with India and Australia implementing their own versions.

Though Anderson admits his team would have been left short of fit players against both Gloucestershire and Durham had replacements not been permitted, he said he was "leaning towards" scrapping injury replacements.

The 43-year-old is the most successful seam bowler in Test history, with 704 wickets.

Anderson suggested he would not ever be permitted to come into a game as an injury replacement, because he would always be more experienced than the player he would be replacing.

"It basically means I've got to play every game," said Anderson.

"There's no point me resting, because I can't then come into a game - I can't be a replacement, ever. If I get injured, I get injured. There's more chance of me getting injured if I try to play every game.

"I can be replaced, because no one in our squad has the same experience, but I could never replace someone else."