{"id":43593,"date":"2025-08-04T16:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T16:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/43593\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T16:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T16:21:10","slug":"ben-stokes-gives-two-word-response-to-idea-of-cricket-substitutions-after-chris-woakes-injury-heroics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/43593\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Stokes gives two-word response to idea of cricket substitutions after Chris Woakes\u2019 injury heroics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Ben Stokes<\/a> gave a blunt response to the idea of introducing substitutions in cricket after Chris Woakes<\/a>\u2019 heroics at the end of the fifth Test between England and India.<\/p>\n

Woakes appeared as England\u2019s No 11 on the final day at The Oval, with his left arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder <\/a>chasing a ball to the boundary on Thursday. He grimaced with pain as he ran between the wickets in an effort to help Gus Atkinson over the winning line, but England fell just short, losing an enthralling match by six runs<\/a> as the series ended in a 2-2 draw.<\/p>\n

Woakes was replaced in the field throughout the match, but the laws of the game do not allow the replacement fielder either to bat or bowl. It meant England could not add a new batter to their line-up and were forced either to play with an injured player or with only 10.<\/p>\n

And despite Woakes potentially causing himself further damage by taking to the field of play, England captain Stokes \u2013 who missed the fifth Test with his own shoulder injury \u2013 does not like the idea of subs in cricket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see it being a thing,\u201d he said. \u201cSorry about this, but if somebody gets injured: tough s***.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChrisChris Woakes, with his arm in a sling, heads out to bat (Ben Whitley\/PA) (PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Stokes spoke on the topic last week, suggesting that the idea was \u201cabsolutely ridiculous\u201d and that \u201cthere would be just too many loopholes\u201d which could be exploited to change a game.<\/p>\n

And he added on Monday: \u201cI could\u2019ve gone into this with a sore shoulder [saying] \u2018I\u2019ll give it a go, hopefully I\u2019ll come through, but if I don\u2019t then somebody comes in\u2019. [Then] you select a team tactically and I think you could manipulate it. The injury ruled me out of this game. <\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe if we had this option [of subs], I could\u2019ve said, \u2018I know it\u2019s not worth it, but if I do go down, somebody can come in\u2019. I couldn\u2019t risk this. If I go down in the game, it ruins the make-up of the team. I\u2019m still heavily against it. It\u2019s just sod\u2019s law it happened a week after I said it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Woakes\u2019 decision to put himself in the line of fire, Stokes added: \u201cUnbelievable, yes, but it was never going to be a question. To go out there, running between the wickets, but we’ve had guys, Rishabh [Pant], broken foot, Bash [Shoaib Bashir] with a broken finger, and Chris going out there with a recently dislocated shoulder. It shows how much energy and effort has been put into this series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-43593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}