The importance of a toss

A toss is a tribute to the element of luck that is at the base of cricket

At Lord’s, Michael Clarke is said to have changed from his customary ‘tails’ to ‘heads’ at the last moment. File Photo

The toss, the toss, my kingdom for a toss.

Perhaps cricket captains, especially losing captains, include that in their daily prayers. At least some English supporters are consoling themselves with the thought that the Lord’s Test was lost because Australia won the toss, and so batted first. Just as Australian supporters might be telling themselves that the first Test was lost by the team which lost the toss. In fact, the last nine Ashes Tests have been won by the team winning the toss.

The toss, or a variation, is an essential part of most sports but in no other does it play as important a role as in cricket. You can choose the ‘wrong’ end in football and score goals, or choose to serve first (or not) in tennis and still lead, but cricketing gods are often ruthless with those who call wrongly.

Still, that is the way it ought to be. The toss is a tribute to the element of luck that is at the base of cricket. Even those who are in control of their destiny — the great batsman, the successful bowler —know the role of chance in their performance. The toss merely acknowledges this.

Punter’s suggestion

Ricky Ponting’s suggestion: “Forget the toss of a coin. Simply let the visiting team look at the pitch on every occasion and decide what they want to do,” might inspire groundsmen to prepare sporting wickets (or alternatively, bland ones), but it takes away something from the game.

Back in the Ashes series of 1905, after the English captain, Stanley Jackson had won six tosses (five Tests and a club game), his Australian counterpart Joe Darling was “stripped to the waist at the Scarborough Festival when his team suggested a wrestle for choice of innings,” as Ray Robinson says in his book on Australian captains.

Jackson, a future governor of Bengal, knew both his cricket and his diplomacy and suggested that he might send the better built George Hirst  to act as captain, whereupon, says Robinson, “Joe concluded that Australia’s chance of batting first would be as good with a coin as a cross-buttock.”

Tom Stoppard’s play  Rosencrantzand Guildenstern are Dead begins with the protagonists tossing a coin, and teasing out a whole philosophy based on the fact that Rosencratz calls ‘heads’ and wins 92 times in a row. No cricket captain quite managed that rate of success, and however fondly players talk of the law of averages, the fact remains that the probability of a coin falling one way or the other is exactly 50-50 regardless of what went before.

Perhaps, suggests Guildenstern after losing the toss, such an event is due to “un-, sub-, or supernatural forces.”

Lucky coins

Most captains carry with them lucky coins. Others make ‘lucky’ calls. At Lord’s, Michael Clarke is said to have changed from his customary ‘tails’ to ‘heads’ at the last moment. If Alastair Cook senses bad luck with the coin for the remaining Tests, perhaps he ought to start walking under ladders (placed 13 in a row) while a black cat crosses his path on the principle that bad luck cancels out bad luck.

Ajit Wadekar used a one-pound coin given to him by Garry Sobers in 1971 after the latter had won three tosses in a row against India. Wadekar won the next two tosses with that coin. Richie Benaud used a coin given to him by Don Bradman, W.G. Grace used a gold coin, Tiger Pataudi merely borrowed a coin from someone nearest the dressing room door.

For long the rule on winning the toss was laid down by Grace: When you win the toss, bat nine times out of ten. The tenth time, think about it and then bat.

In his time Pataudi earned a reputation for inserting the other side in. Occasionally “to see what happens” as he said, and at other times to protect the Indian top order from the opposition’s opening bowlers.

In 2002, when Sourav Ganguly decided to bat at Headingley, on that most English of English wickets, the gasp could be heard around India. Yet India made in excess of 600 and won the match by an innings. It was the beginning of the ‘new’ India, as the captain injected the team with the confidence and self-esteem that would see them reach the No.1 position in world cricket.

There is a charm about the toss in cricket that moors it to a time when unpredictability was built in to the game. It is a reminder of what might have been, even if occasionally it merely tells us what will be.