Most changes in cricket have been calculated to inject logic and pragmatism into a sport that is irrational and quirky.
This has partly to do with the demands of television, partly with the quaint idea of keeping up with the times. The idea to do away with the toss has been in the air for a while; the county championship has been played without it for two years now.
Yet, remove the toss and you excise from the game something unique, something fundamental, something that pays a tribute to the element of chance in sport. All captains are equal before the toss.
It is too another step in the homogenisation of cricket, ignoring the game’s unique challenges in different conditions. It is not the toss that is the problem — if the problem indeed is fewer away wins — but lack of skill to adapt.
Strike a balance
The fond hope is that giving the visiting captain the choice to bat or bowl first will lead to the preparation of sporting wickets and greater balance between home and away results.
Statistics from the county championship are admittedly thin, but interesting nevertheless. While doing away with the toss saw an 11% rise in matches going into the final day, there was no increase in away wins. In 2015, before the toss was removed, away sides won 45 matches. In 2016 it dropped to 33. It was 36 in 2017.
In 150 Tests since the start of 2015, the away side has won only 45 matches, while losing 80 (UAE is taken as Pakistan’s home venue). So wherever you sit on the toss debate, you will have figures to support your view.
A game of nuances
Wicket preparation is the home team’s prerogative. Cricket is a game of nuances. A Test match in Chennai is different in texture from one in Perth; players of skill know how to tweak their game, and that is both the charm and challenge of the sport. Handing the visiting captain the choice might give him the sort of advantage doctored tracks give the home team.
What if a team were allowed to make one change from its list of twelve after the toss? One might decide to go with the extra spinner to take advantage of a wicket guaranteed to deteriorate in the fourth innings while the other might strengthen its batting. This is not foolproof either, and I just throw it out there for discussion.
The toss existed in cricket before leg byes, follow-on, declarations, wides, no-balls, leg before wicket did. It set in motion the first-ever Test match in 1876-77. The call for doing away with the toss isn’t new. There were brief attempts in 1884 and 1905 to change the practice but these didn’t come to much.
No panacea
Eliminating the toss is no panacea. If a side knew whether it might bat or bowl first, curators could still provide the kind of pitch it wanted (not in international cricket, perhaps). It might even keep spectators away on the first day if they had an idea who would bat first given the conditions, and that’s good neither for the venue nor for television.
Some years ago, Kolkata’s groundsman Prabir Mukherjee called the then Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s instructions to give him a spinning track “immoral”. That was in a series against England.
It is one of the quirks of the game that the fate of an international is, in some ways, in the hands of the individual preparing the wicket. He decides. He executes. But Mukherjee’s is a rare case. Most groundsmen are happy to oblige the home captain. And usually these things are accomplished more subtly.
In England, teams are presented with ‘English’ pitches which help seam, in Australia, pitches have bounce and pace, India’s tend to assist spin — these are as well established as the game’s other well-knowns like the pitch of 22 yards and the size of the wickets.
Exaggerate natural advantages
It is neither surprising nor immoral for a country to exaggerate its natural advantages. If pitches are prepared to counter these advantages (to keep the visiting team happy), then it won’t be long before they become uniformly bland and featureless. Cricket is not table tennis or chess which are played on unvarying surfaces.
England’s cricket board is in favour of doing away with the toss; many former captains and coaches agree. The Board of Control for Cricket in India has not taken an official position. It doesn’t need to till the ICC’s cricket committee makes its recommendation at the end of the month. These will then be forwarded to the chief executives committee at the ICC’s annual general meeting.
The coin spinning in the air, the expressions on the faces of the captains as they call wrongly, the subtle signs by which spectators and teammates realise the outcome are all part of the game.
If it makes sense to, let’s retain the toss; if it makes no sense, then there is even more reason to retain it. For cricket is that kind of a game.
