Roderick Easdale reveals why end of the mandatory coin toss deprives us of all the related intrigue…
In next season’s County Championship, instead of having a mandatory toss to determine who will bat first, the visiting side will be automatically allowed to bowl first if they want to. But if the visiting team wishes to bat first, then a toss will be held as usual. The aim is to stop counties producing seam-friendly first-day pitches.
This change is on a trial basis, and at the end of the season a decision will be made on whether to retain it.
The move is at the instigation of the ECB’s cricket committee and was approved last week.
Nottinghamshire chairman Peter Wright, cricket committee chairman, said: “The plight of spin bowling in this country brought things into focus.
Spinners bowled only 21.5 per cent of the overs in the 2015 Championship.
“Counties want to win matches, and that generally means taking 20 wickets. That has to be a reason we’ve seen a lot of pitches that start a bit green and damp, and get better as the game goes on, rather than deteriorating to help the spinners.
“But another main function of the County Championship is to develop players for England and we don’t think it has been serving that purpose for spinners.
“By giving the away team the option of bowling first, we hope the home side will be encouraged to produce the best possible four-day pitch. That will be good for cricket in general, and not only for spinners: batsmen should also benefit, from better pitches which will lead to them facing more spin, and if pitches start drier, the ball may scuff up a bit more and produce more reverse swing.”
This is the first change to the toss rules in the official Championship’s 136-year history. However, In 1884 it was proposed that the away side be given the choice of innings, and a vote supporting this was carried by the county representatives, but this change was never actually implemented.
Winning the toss no doubt gives a better chance of winning the game – studies have shown that in Test and Championship cricket matches which ended in a positive result have been won roughly 53 per cent of the time by the side who won the toss.
So some captains have developed intriguing tactics and tricks for winning the toss, some more fair than others. We present our handy instructional guide on how to win the battle of the coin flip…
Mumble
In the 1st test of 1993/4 between Pakistan and New Zealand, Salim Malik’s call was an indistinct mutter, and quite possibly in Urdu for good measure. When the coin came down he pounced upon it and declared that he had won and would field.
Malik tried the same technique in the fifth of the ODIs which followed that test series, but Kiwi skipper Ken Rutherford was ready for him this time and swooped down himself to pick up the fallen coin and declared: “We’ll field.”
This is why the match referee now supervises the toss in international games.
Know your coin
WG Grace used to call “the lady” and however the coin – which had Queen Victoria on one side and Britannia on the other – landed, he claimed victory. Captains are now required to call “heads” or “tails” to avoid such ambiguities.
At Harare in the first Test of the 1994/95 series between Zimbabwe and Pakistan, Salim Malik – yes, him again – called “bird” when Andy Flower flipped the coin. The coin came down with the eagle side uppermost and Flower accepted that he had lost the toss, and Malik elected to bat.
But match referee Jackie Hendricks then disallowed the toss, saying Malik should have called heads or tails and the toss was re-held. Flower won this one and Zimbabwe batted first instead, and posted 544-4 declared as a prelude to an innings win – the country’s first victory in its 11th Test.
Accept others’ wrong adjudication
In an ODI between South Africa and India in December 1992, South African Kepler Wessels explained the heads and tails on the coin which had animal heads on each side. Mohammed Azharuddin called heads and when the coin came down, Trevor Quirk, who was presenting the toss for TV, saw a head on the face of the coin and declared “you’ve won Azhar – what do you want to do?” A surprised Azharruddin who, correctly, had believed the coin had come down tails, said he would bat – and bat India did.
Ignore ‘net’ practice
The 1983 Benson & Hedges Cup quarter final between Middlesex and Gloucestershire was washed out, and so who went through to the semi-final was to be decided upon a coin toss – subsequently bowl-outs were introduced to avoid such an unsatisfactory scenario of determining abandoned knockout games.
Middlesex’s Mike Gatting had called heads to win the toss in the abandoned game, and after several ‘nets’ in the dressing room to decide what to call, it was decided that he would call “heads” again. But when the coin was in the air, he called “tails” on impulse. Tails it was and Middlesex went on to win that year’s competition.
Get on the right side of your opponent
In a county game at Taunton, England captain Tony Lewis, leading Glamorgan, went out to toss with Roy Kerslake. Lewis called wrongly only for Kerslake to ask him what he would do. “I’d have batted,” said a startled Lewis. And bat Glamorgan did – to victory. Lewis had, unwittingly, been standing on Kerslake’s deaf side, who had misheard the call and thought Lewis had won the toss.
Avoid tossing
If you don’t have a toss, you can’t lose it… right? In a match between Middlesex and Warwickshire, MIddlesex skipper Mike Brearley realised that Warwickshire wanted to bowl whereas he wished to bat, and therefore suggested that the toss was unnecessary.
It was announced over the tannoy that “the captains had negotiated and Middlesex would bat”. But next year’s Wisden decreed that Brearley had lost the non-existent toss.
In the 1979 Oval Test Mike Brearley and India’s Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan both believed they had won the toss, but as Brearley wanted to bowl and Venkat bat, they agreed it made little odds. But the official records give the toss to India. So Brearley was maybe better at the toss than the records suggest. One who was definitely an excellent ‘tosser’ was Peter Eckersley, the Lancashire captain. In 1934 he won 27 of 30 tosses in that year’s Championship. Aided by such fortune, Lancashire won the title.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper on Friday December 4, 2015
