Giving a toss
The ICC misses the chance to level the pitch for visiting teams in tests.
Disappointing news from Mumbai that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has knocked back a proposal to do away with the toss, that anomaly whereby the outcome of a five-day game can be effectively determined by the toss of a coin before play gets under way.
The recommendation, which arose out of concerns over pitch doctoring and a desire to restore balance to test cricket, was that the visiting team should automatically get to choose whether to bat or bowl. However, the ICC’s cricket committee decided the toss is “an integral part of test cricket that forms part of the narrative of the game”, a woolly justification that captures the tendency of committees to operate on the basis that the safest course of action is to do nothing.
Test cricket’s increasing predictability is a major reason for its endangered-species status. Of the 26 series between the seven top nations since 2015, only five were won by the visitors. The odds are stacked against the visiting team because the crowded schedule gives them little time to acclimatise: last summer in Australia, England had three practice matches – as opposed to competitive games – against moderate opposition before the first test. They lost that and went on to lose the series 4-0.
It’s a far cry from 1962/63 when England played first-class matches against four full- strength state sides and two shadow Australian XIs before the first test, which they drew. They went on to draw the series.
Or from 1989, when a young Shane Warne asked teammate Merv Hughes what to expect on his first tour of England. “Put it this way,” said Hughes. “We’re sponsored by a beer company and we’re only playing England and they’re crap so we’re going to win. So this is going to be the greatest four and a half months of our lives.”