It's Not Always About The Toss

Home-field advantage in cricket inherently affords the home team: 1) the ability to custom order pitches that suit them 2) the privilege of home crowd support and 3) the benefit of being more familiar with the playing conditions. Now, distinguished former and current players are voicing concern that the coin toss is providing home teams the incentive to prepare pitches that unduly suit them over their opponents. As a result, they claim, visiting teams are finding it impossible to win Test matches on foreign soil. Therefore, they are recommending that the ICC do away with the coin toss all together.

The coin toss is one of cricket's oldest traditions. It has existed since the first Test played in 1877. Is its impact on the outcome of a Test match more pronounced today than in decades past? Let's look at why teams are performing poorly on away tours, and whether doing away with the coin toss would make overseas contests more competitive?

In modern-day cricket, the off-season has become an extinct commodity. There's barely any downtime for a professional cricketer anymore. Between playing the various formats of international cricket, professional cricketers are busy juggling their time and services among various lucrative T20 leagues around the world.

Cricket boards are raking in massive revenues from personalized media rights and corporate sponsorship deals. There is pressure on these boards, from the corporate sponsors, to have their teams play the maximum number of international matches in the shortest possible time span per tour. Such aggressive scheduling is, eventually, taking its toll on the quality of cricket being played on the field.

Visiting teams, today, are much weaker opponents, in general, than they used to be in the past. One of the key reasons for this is that they do not have the time to adequately prepare themselves for an overseas Test series. In the interest of saving time, they choose to opt out of playing practice matches before a Test series. Practice matches are specifically designed to help them to acclimatize to the playing conditions and the home team's general environment.

Let's take a look at India's current tour of England and compare it to Pakistan's tour of England, earlier this summer. India's "preparation" included one four-day game, which was later shortened to a three-day game. Pakistan's, on the other hand, included three first-class matches and a Test match against Ireland. As a result, despite having a relatively weaker batting line-up, Pakistan managed to draw the Test series.

There is no evidence to suggest that had India won the toss that the results of the Tests would have been any different. Most experts attribute the Indian batsmen's failures to faulty strokes rather than to the nature of the pitch. In fact, neither Virat Kohli nor any member of the Indian team management blamed the pitch for India's losses. Further, in Pakistan's case, they won the first Test after losing the toss and lost the second after winning the toss.

So, clearly, visiting teams' deteriorating win/loss record trend cannot, simply, be explained away by pointing to the coin toss. After all, home teams have had the advantage of preparing pitches that suit them even in the 1980s and '90s, when visiting teams had a significantly better win record. In fact, as the evidence suggests, it is a lack of adequate practice in overseas conditions that is ultimately responsible for visitors doing poorly on such tours.

The proposal to do away with the coin toss, hence, is a flimsy one. Its only impact would be to erase one of cricket's symbols of history and tradition. In fact, the coin toss must be respected, preserved and cherished. It's not the coin toss, stupid! Rather, it's your preparation.

England v India: Specsavers 1st Test - Day One