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India’s bowling coach Morne Morkel has shared the details of what transpired in the dressing room as they decided to name Harshit Rana as a concussion substitute for Shivam Dube in the 4th T20I against England in Pune. India replaced Dube with Rana midway through the second innings after he was hit on his helmet in the last over of the Indian innings.
The replacement sparked widespread reactions from experts, who claimed that Rana was not a like-for-like replacement for Dube. The speedster went on to play a crucial role in India’s 15-run win, picking three wickets on his debut. Following his match winning performance, Morne Morkel addressed the controversy surrounding Rana’s inclusion in the playing XI and revealed that Dube had a headache after returning to the dressing room.
He further said that the team gave Rana’s name as the replacement, and it was the match referee who made the call.
“As far as I’m aware Shivam Dube obviously took the knock against the head and came off the field during the innings break with mild headache symptoms. We took a name forward to the match referee in terms of a suitable substitution and from there it’s up to the referee to take that decision. So a decision was made,” said Morkel in the post-match press conference.
Furthermore, the Indian bowling coach mentioned how Rana had to quickly get ready and once again asserted that it was the referee’s decision that allowed them to field Rana as a replacement.
We can only take the name forward: Morkel
“Harshit was having dinner. He had to get himself ready as quickly as possible to get on to the field and bowl. Yeah, I thought he did an excellent job. No, like I said that it goes to the powers above me, match referee, he made the decision. We can only take the name forward and from there it’s out of our hands. We got the green light to go with that and we gave him the opportunity,” he added.
Coming back to the match, after being put in to bat first, India were left reeling at 12/3 as Saqib Mahmood bowled a triple wicket maiden in the second over itself. Shivam Dube (53 off 34) and Hardik Pandya (53 off 30) rescued the Indian innings to help them post a good score of 181/9 in 20 overs. In reply, England were bundled out for 166 in 19.4 overs and lost the match by 15 runs.
