Subs are just not cricket, says Fleming

Stephen Fleming

Gone by lunchtime? You get the feeling the new substitution rule wouldn't make it past the breakfast-hour gong if Stephen Fleming had his way.

The New Zealand skipper was initially among the first to raise doubts about the one-day game's experimental sub law and delivered another broadside from Harare yesterday, on the eve of his team's Tri-Series final against India.

Fleming told Radio Sport that he had no time for the concept of a full substitute, that he "hated" the new rule, it was "rubbish", and that neither he nor New Zealand Cricket were supportive of the change.

But more revealingly, he also touched on the possibility of the substitution law working against New Zealand's natural reserves of allrounders and neutralising one of the team's main weapons in the lead-up to the World Cup.

His concern was that, if the new rule was approved after the experimental phase, teams without the flexibility of New Zealand would be compensated by an ability to cover-up their most glaring weakness.

The trend has already been noticed over the past two months, with most sides apart from New Zealand introducing fringe allrounders for specialist batsmen and bowlers to lend some balance to their line-up.

However, New Zealand would normally be loath to nominate Scott Styris, Jacob Oram, Daniel Vettori or Chris Cairns as their substitute, reasoning that they need those players involved in the game as much as possible.

Before last night's final they had subbed in Vettori, Shane Bond and Jeetan Patel (twice) for Fleming, Nathan Astle and Craig McMillan respectively, although it would be unwise to read much into the games against Zimbabwe.

Ranked No 4 in the world behind Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Australia, New Zealand have been blessed with a useful group of allrounders over the past couple of seasons, and will look to them for an advantage in the 2007 World Cup.

What Fleming seemed to be hinting at yesterday was that it was becoming abundantly clear that the new rule would work against New Zealand's interests, in terms of providing more assistance to the teams who truly needed it.

NZC chief executive Martin Snedden said yesterday that he hadn't heard the comments, but acknowledged that Fleming could be correct in thinking that the new law might harm New Zealand's World Cup chances.

But Snedden said the acid test would arrive in February when the ICC sat down to review the substitution experiment, as well as the much more readily-accepted powerplay expansion.

"There was a lot of scepticism about the substitution rule in the lead-up to this trial, and NZC expressed our reservations before it was implemented."