Gambhir may bristle but injuries, not substitutes, are a key part of cricket

India’s Dhruv Jurel was allowed to keep wicket but not bat after Rishabh Pant suffered a broken foot at Old Trafford. Photograph: Andy Kearns/Getty Images

I’ll be honest, I’m done in. Not feeling it. Quills deep in the red zone. This white blank page looks impossibly foreboding. I feel like I’m blinking up at a vast Eiger-shaped word document. Nine hundred words of Garamond from the summit and my crampons are made of blancmange.

You think these Spin columns are easy? I had four days in bed after the last one. I need to get out of this. I’ve been called up, but now it’s plain to see it’s not working. Should I claim Scrivener’s palsy? The yips? Desperately and repeatedly slam the laptop lid on my knuckles? Channel Allan Border to Dean Jones at Chennai in 1986? “Let’s get a proper cricket writer out here. A southerner.” Andy Bull. Tanya Aldred. Let’s be ’avin you!