Mid-game injuries almost thwarted his Sydney Sixers against the Melbourne Renegades but Moises Henriques says a rule allowing BBL teams to replace casualties mid-game could be exploited.
The Sixers were forced to reconfigure their batting order on Monday night when veteran Daniel Hughes aggravated his elbow injury in the field and was unable to play on at the SCG.
Hughes will be assessed ahead of Saturday's match against the Sydney Thunder but was unable to hold his bat in the sheds at the innings break.
"He was trying his best in the change room before we went out to be able to bat or do something but (could not)," captain Henriques said after the Sixers' five-wicket win.
"I'm confident in the depth but 'Hughesy' is a very classy player. He's not an easy man to replace."
The injury almost came back to haunt the Sixers, who fell to 5-126 in pursuit of 170 and then lost Hayden Kerr to a cramp.
Ben Dwarshuis (14no) and Henriques (53no) forged the winning partnership as the Sixers limped to victory in the 19th over.
The Sixers, who bat deep, still had a capable ball-striker in paceman Sean Abbott waiting in the dugout and picked up 37 runs from Jack Edwards when he moved up the order to No.3 in Hughes' place.
A simpler fix might've been to replace Hughes altogether with a fresh player, with in-form Kurtis Patterson an option given he missed selection in the XI.
But while the BBL has had a concussion substitute policy in place since before the COVID-19 pandemic, it does not permit injured players to be swapped out - except for in the case of substitute fielders.
The BBL did briefly introduce an "X-Factor player" rule in 2020 that allowed for a tactical change mid-game, but AAP understands an injury replacement rule is not on the league's radar.
Henriques was in two minds about whether such a rule would even work.
"They've opened up some precedent to look into that with the concussion rule," he said.
"If a player can't come back on after they've been concussed, there's probably an argument there for them to be able to be replaced if it's an external injury."
But Henriques felt an injury replacement policy would "open up a can of worms" and could be exploited.
"You might have a seamer who comes in who's suited to the first six overs and he's just got a little bit of a niggle and he decides he doesn't want to field anymore and then they've got a specialist death bowler who comes on and replaces him to bowl his last two overs," he said.
"It's a tough one.
"You've got to leave it in the hands of the physios and the doctors, but under the pressure of the hierarchy of coaches and managers and performance managers that are desperate to win, whether the integrity holds up ... I don't know what the answer is there."
