Although the practice of tossing the coin before a test match of cricket by the two captains is as old as the game, in recent times we have seen many cases where the winning team of the toss puts the losing team in the clear. disadvantages, including an evolving negative mindset In some cricket-playing nations such as England, Australia, the West Indies and New Zealand, where the focus is on preparing fast bowlers, grass pitches are prepared and once that the host team wins the toss in a one-day match, they put the opposition at bat, especially if the morning is cloudy beyond the cool moisture on the pitch, and obviously the away team suffers nothing from their fault or their weaknesses. The opposite of this is true in countries, particularly India or Sri Lanka, where the focus is always on the spinners, slower flat pitches are set up with no turf, and the team that wins the pitch naturally wins first, because in most cases the launch begins to become dangerous from the 3rd or 4th day; the grotesquely changeable pitches in India are undoubtedly in some decline after the advent of the shorter format Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2009 for obvious reasons. Even in the case of the IPL, the losing teams are at a disadvantage, because the winning teams always prefer to chase and, as seen in India, anything above 300 can also be successfully chased on the flat batting courts.

This explains why India has been losing most of the series away from home in the last few decades and winning most of the series at home, of course only in the last few years, due to more thought and effort being put into preparing players. faster bowling. Back in the seventies and eighties in the home test series we had witnessed the unique spectacle of seeing one or two medium fast bowlers in the Indian eleven bowling only one or two overs at the start of the fourth innings even with the Living legend Sunil. Gavaskar would sometimes come in to bowl the first overs and always hit the ball hard on the ground so that the famous spinners could take control as soon as possible. Such a scenario has been dying out since the late 1990s; however, the throw debuff remains as it always has, in all formats of the game.

Day-night games, introduced for express business purposes, the draw handicap scenario becomes more serious. As the autumn season begins, the traditional cricket season through winter, dew forms later in the evening. All cricketers/commentators/cricket lovers know very well that dew makes the ball slippery, which makes it very difficult for bowlers, both pacers and spinners, to get a good grip on the ball and direct their trajectory as the players would like. Therefore, the winning team of the toss always faces the opposition to win first, as most ominously seen at the ICC Men’s T20-2021 World Cup in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Ever since the IPL-2021 matches switched to the UAE midway through, we had seen the slow pitches there that make batting difficult in the first innings and bowling difficult in the second innings, invariably favoring the winning and chasing teams. of pitches, particularly if the match involved two top-tier competitive teams and not weaker teams or minnows as opposition, and most matches ended with low scores and often one-sided.

Many disappointed fans from India, also from South Africa, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, would have loved to see what their teams could have done if they had won the draw and chased in those crucially important matches which they lost perhaps due to, to some extent. significant, the loss of the draw. Since it involved India, a team from the world’s richest cricket board and their strategic business interests globally, the hoopla over the ‘launch’ is getting louder and nastier. However, as we have illustrated above, the draw affects the matches and hurts the losing teams, more so if they are almost equal according to the International Cricket Council (ICC) indices and rankings. Now, we will see if the launch can be completely or at least partially removed.

Interestingly, eliminating the toss would be the easiest option in the IPL itself, regardless of your or my opinion of its usefulness, because the tournament involves 8-10 teams with each team playing twice each on a double basis. shift; in an 8-franchise IPL, each team plays 14 games in total at the league stage. Therefore, at the league stage, a competing team should be allowed to choose to field or bat in the first game and the same choice for the opposing team in the second game and so on. In the elimination round, the choice can be given based on the respective net execution rates of the two rivals. We have argued many times before that the ICC should adopt a similar format ideally with a double robin where the Super-12 would be just one group like in IPL and each team would play each other at least twice. Therefore, the throw can be discarded as we have shown. In fact, this standard must be adopted in all ICC tournaments in all formats.

Also in the Test series with which we started this piece, throw removal is entirely possible. For example, take a five match Test series between India and say England playing either country as host; Either India or England should be allowed to choose to bat or bowl first in the first match, followed by India having the option in the second and up to the fourth match. In the fifth and final Test, which may be the decider in some cases, the team with the highest ICC ranking should have the choice. In Test series of 2 or 6 games there is no problem. This can work very well for all bilateral and international Test and ODI (One Day International) tournaments. And of course for both men’s and women’s cricket.

Throwing away bowling practice would pave the way for more equal encounters in the glorious game of gentlemen’s (and ladies’) cricket. This would never put any team at a disadvantage they can’t do anything about. This is to make all teams equal in terms of choice, and definitely not performances, which is the game of cricket on the pitch based on the application, dedication and calm of mind shown by the players. Countries have been trying for a long time to put an end to the marked inequalities present in both developed and underdeveloped countries and to eradicate poverty. So why not try the same thing in the most popular and expanding game of cricket to break down the inequalities created by the toss of a single coin? Why not let the currency do what it is really supposed to do?