Cricket: Should The Toss Be Tossed Away?
This explains why India had been losing
most of the away series in the past decades and winning most of the home series,
of course in recent years only, due to more thought and efforts being given to
groom more fast bowlers. In the seventies and the eighties in home Test series
we had witnessed the unique spectacle of watching the one or at most two medium
fast bowlers in the Indian eleven bowling just one or two overs at the start of
the fourth innings with even the living legend Sunil Gavaskar at times coming
in to bowl the early overs and always hitting the ball hard on the ground so
that the famous spinners could take over as soon as possible. Such a scenario
has been getting extinct since the late nineties; however, the toss
disadvantage remains as ever, in all formats of the game.
The day-night games, introduced for
express commercial purposes, the scene of the toss disadvantage gets more
serious. As the autumn season starts, the traditional cricket season through to
the winter, dew forms later in the evening. All cricketers/commentators/cricket
lovers know very well that the dew makes the ball slippery, making it very
difficult for the bowlers, both pacers and spinners, to grip the ball well and
direct its trajectory as the bowlers would want. Therefore, the toss-winning
team always puts in the opposition to bat first, as is most disturbingly
witnessed in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup-2021 in Oman and UAE. From the matches
of the IPL-2021 shifted to UAE midway we had seen the slow pitches there that
makes batting difficult in the first innings and makes bowling difficult in the
second innings, invariably favoring the toss-winning-chasing teams,
particularly if the match involved two top competitive teams and not the weaker
teams or the minnows as opposition, and most of the matches ending as
low-scoring and often one-sided ones.
Many disappointed fans from India, for
that matter for South Africa, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh too, would have loved to
watch what their teams could have done had they won the toss and chased in those
crucially important matches they lost perhaps due to, to some significant
extent, the loss of the toss. Since it involved India, a team from the richest
cricket board of the world and its strategic business interests globally, the
hue and cry over the ‘toss’ is getting noisier and nastier. However, as we have
illustrated earlier the toss does affect the matches and does do harm to the
toss-losing teams, more if they are almost equals as per the International
Cricket Council (ICC) indices and rankings. Now, we’ll see if the toss can be
done away with totally or at least partially.
Interestingly, doing away with the toss
would be the most easier option in the IPL itself, irrespective of my or your
opinion about its utility, because the tournament engages 8-10 teams where each
team plays each two times on a double-robin basis; in a 8-franchise IPL each
team plays 14 matches in all at the league stage. Therefore, at the league
stage one competing team should be allowed to choose fielding or batting in the
first match and the same option to the opposing team in the second match and so
on. In the elimination round the choice can be given based on the respective net
run-rates of the two rivals. We have argued many times earlier that the ICC
should adopt a similar format ideally with a double-robin where the Super-12
would be just one group like in IPL and each team would play each at least
twice. The toss can thus be tossed away
as we have shown. In fact, this standard should be adopted in all ICC
tournaments in all formats.
In Test series too that we started this
piece with, the elimination of the toss is entirely possible. For example let
us take a five-match Test Series between India and say England in any country of
the two as a host; either India or England should be allowed to opt for bat or
bowl first in the first match, followed by India having the choice in the second
and till the fourth match. In the fifth and the last Test, may be the deciding
one in some cases, the team with the best ICC ranking should be given the option
of the choice. In 2 or 6-match Test series there is no problem at all. This can
very well work for all bilateral and international Test and ODI (one-day international)
tournaments. And naturally, for both Men’s and Women’s cricket.
Tossing away the practice of the toss
would pave the way for a more egalitarian encounters in the glorious gentlemen’s
(gentlewoman’s too) game of cricket. This would never put any team at a
disadvantage about which they can do just nothing. This is to make all teams
equals in terms of choice, and definitely not in performances which is the game
of cricket on the field based on application, dedication and mental calm
demonstrated by the players. Countries have been long trying to end the stark
inequalities present in both developed and underdeveloped countries and to eradicate
poverty. Therefore, why not try the same in the most popular and expanding game
of cricket to end the inequalities generated by the toss of a mere coin? Why not let the coin do what it’s actually
meant for?
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