In the recently concluded match between West Zone and Central Zone in the Dilip Trophy 2025, the newly introduced ‘Serious Injury’ Replacement Rule was used by West Zone, as his wicket-keeper and opening batter, Hartic Desai, missed the second innings due to the injury to quadrise.
Cricket game is not known for replacement of mid-match injury, except except replacement of substitute fielders who can take the ground as a replacement of any injured player, but cannot adopt the role of batting or bowling.
However, recent incidents, including injuries of Rishabh Pant and Chris Woakes in Manchester and Oval tests, have forced cricketing bodies to think otherwise.
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The pants suffered a huge injury as his leg was fractured with a shock, but still had to come out for India to bat, as his replacement, Dhruv Jurael, could not play any role with the bat for the game.
What is the ‘serious injury’ rule of BCCI in domestic cricket?
BCCI believes in this policy that charity begins at home, and so they took the first step to mark the change in BCCI rules for injury replacement. The BCCI introduced the ‘severe injury’ replacement rule, with guidelines for multi-day matches for the upcoming domestic season of 2025–26.
According to the rule, a substitute player can take the ground when a player in XI faces a serious external injury during the ongoing match. The injury should be on the ground and may include a fracture, deep cut or chaos that removes the player from the game.
After such an incident, the match will be decided by the match referee and the team’s doctor by the field umpires. Therefore, the coach or manager of the team can then come up with a formal request for a replacement player.
However, no such rules have been specified for white-ball cricket.
Saurabh Naval became the first batsman to draft under new role
Now, the player who came out as the first player as an injury replacement player under the new rule set by the BCCI is Maharashtra batsman Saurabh Navale.
The incident occurred in the Duleep Trophy 2025 semifinal conflict between the Central Zone and the West Zone, where the West Zone Opening Batter Hartic Desai was excluded with a quadrisepo injury, inspiring umpires to allow umpires to take the field as their replacement.
However, the people could not take maximum advantage of the occasion, as they were cleaned for only 9 runs by off-spinner Saranash Jain. The West Zone could eventually manage only 216/8 in its second innings as two team players shook hands, and the Central Zone qualified for the Duleep Trophy 2025 final.
Central Zone advance in the Duleep Trophy 2025 final after a huge 600 runs
After posting a total of 438 runs in the first innings on the first innings of Ruturaj Gikwad’s Kolosal 184-Run innings from West Zone, Central Zone Batters took out a stunning team show to take their team to the finals of Dalip Trophy 2025.
A total of 6 Central Zone batsmen scored a big half -century as they had posted a mammath 600 runs, despite the same batsman, which was not going to a hundred. Danish Malevar, Shubam Sharma, Rajat Patidar, Upendra Yadav, Harsh Dubey, and Summary Jain all scored half -centuries.
Jain took 8 wickets in two innings in the game and was one of the most important players to lead the Dalip Trophy against the South region in the 2025 final.
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