Controversy has emerged once more from the ECB's County Championship injury replacement trial, after Lancashire replaced injured spin-bowling allrounder, Arav Shetty, with keeper-batter George Bell.
Lancashire's request to replace Arav Shetty with Tom Hartley
Playing against Durham on day two at Chester-le-Street, Lancashire required a replacement for off-spinning allrounder Shetty, who sustained an injury to his hand in the morning session. Given that Shetty was the only spinner in Lancashire's side, and former England Test spinner Tom Hartley was part of their squad who had travelled to Durham, it looked like Lancashire had a natural replacement.
The ECB's injury substitute trial, which is part of a wider trial into injury replacements in first-class cricket by the ICC, specifies that all replacements must be like-for-like, at the discretion of the match referee.
Match 24, Durham vs Lancashire
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However, when Lancashire announced who would be replacing Shetty, it wasn't Hartley, but wicketkeeper-batter Bell, who was in the squad as cover for Matty Hurst. The BBC later reported that Hartley was turned down as a replacement for Shetty on the grounds that he was more experienced.
Hartley has 43 first-class caps to his name and represented England in five Test matches in India in 2024. Shetty was playing just his third first-class fixture, having signed a two-year contract with Lancashire at the beginning of 2026.
This follows another controversial incident last week, where Lancashire were denied pacer Tom Bailey as an injury substitute for fellow right-arm quick Ajeet Singh Dale on the grounds of experience. They instead had to call up left-arm allrounder Ollie Sutton from a second XI match.
Speaking to BBC Radio last week, Lancashire head coach Steven Croft said: "It's not like someone is coming in and bowling 10mph quicker. Instead, we've had to call up a left-arm seaming all-rounder and that doesn't sit right with us really."
Now in its fourth round, the substitute trial has had several controversial incidents, with the ECB reportedly looking to tighten the rule after the first block of Championship fixtures ends in June.
Image credit @lancscricket
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