ICC approves Rishabh Pant as replacement for Dhawan

Southampton, June 19 (IANS) The International Cricket Council (ICC) confirmed on Wednesay that the Event Technical Committee of the World Cup has approved Rishabh Pant as a replacement player for Shikhar Dhawan in Indias squad for the remainder of the tournament.

Opener Dhawan, who suffered a thumb injury during the league match against Australia, has been ruled out of further participation in the event.

The ICC release said: "The replacement of a player requires the approval of the Event Technical Committee before the replacement player can be officially added to the squad. The Event Technical Committee of the ICC World Cup 2019 consists of Geoff Allardice (ICC, ETC chairman), Campbell Jamieson (ICC representative), Steve Elworthy (CWC representative), Alan Fordham (host representative), Harsha Bhogle and Kumar Sangakkara (both independent representatives)."

Dhawan was ruled out of the World Cup on Wednesday morning as he was not in a position to recover in time for the remaining games of the showpiece event. While IANS had broken the news, team manager Sunil Subramaniam addressed the media in Southampton on Wednesday afternoon and confirmed the same.

"Shikhar has a fracture on the left hand and will remain in cast until July 2019. We have requested ICC for Rishabh pant as a replacement," he said.

IANS learnt that Dhawan visited a specialist on Wednesday morning before the call to bring in Pant as replacement was taken.

Explaining the nature of fracture, BCCI tweeted: "Dhawan has been diagnosed with a fracture of the first metacarpal on his left hand following a ball impact injury during the team's second match versus Australia at the Oval on 5th June 2019."