#360debate: Should the toss be ditched?

Sport360 staff 09:18 11/04/2016
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  • It's a toss up: Cricketing tradition.

    The toss at the start of a cricket match is a tradition as old as the game itself. Yet, as the new county season gets underway in England, it is a tradition set to be cast aside in favour of the visiting captain being offered the option to field first.

    Why? Over recent years there has been much criticism of wickets being overly-tailored to suit the home side or to produce a certain result.

    The impact is not good for the development of cricketers, that much is for certain. However, is scrapping the toss the best way to deal with the issue? Ajit Vijaykumar and Barny Read debate.

    Ajit Vijaykumar, Assistant News Editor, says YES

    Test match tradition is something that has always been close to my heart and like many admirers of the longest format, I have always liked Test matches a certain way.

    Up until last year, it all seemed well and fine with more and more Tests producing results. But while there were more results, the quality of cricket fell as home sides went for pitches heavily loaded in their favour.

    Two series from last year come to mind. Firstly, during the Ashes, England bowled first in the critical fourth Test in Nottingham on a pitch tailor-made for seamers. Stuart Broad picked up eight wickets and the Ashes was won.

    Then during the India-South Africa Test series, the hosts dished out rank turners for the Mohali and Nagpur Tests where neither team crossed 250. India won the toss in both games and batted first.

    It has become all too convenient for hosts to prepare tracks that suit them and simply wait for the coin to fall in their favour so that they can follow a set pattern and get the desired result.

    Which is why the ECB’s decision to try out a system this county season where the visiting captain is given an option to bowl first is interesting and something that can be looked into for Tests as well.

    No doubt it tinkers with the traditions of the game, but the more I see one-sided games on ‘doctored’ wickets, the more I am convinced that it is time for change.

    If you take the toss out of the equation, chances are groundsmen will prepare tracks that hopefully last five days while retaining its traditional nature. That’s because once the home captain knows the visiting skipper will get a chance to bowl, or even bat, first, there will be less likelihood of instructions being sent to curators beforehand.

    Matches will be allowed to take their natural course where batting or bowling first won’t be like hitting the jackpot. It’s an effective way to level the playing field.

    Barny Read, Online Deputy Editor, says NO

    Cricket is a sport laced with tradition, its intricacies so delicately poised and steeped in history that it makes the game so rich.

    And as with any sport defined by split seconds, chance plays a huge role in proceedings.

    Not only that it is a thinking man’s sport, Test cricket in particular a battle of wills, patience and the ability to manoeuvre your team into a position of power through luck as much as it is by judgement. To rid the game of such long standing laws takes away from the spectacle.

    The ECB are doing just that by scrapping the toss. Their aim is to make for more competitive cricket but the root of the problem is pitches, not the format of the game.

    By all means introduce sterner punishment for counties failing to deliver sporting wickets but playing with the laws of the game? No, thank you. You may have introduced the game to the world but that does not give you the right to start tearing down its foundations.

    If this were to spill over to Test cricket it would be a devastating blow to any purist that delights in seeing the two captains take to the middle and put their hopes into the simple flip of a coin.

    So much rides on that moment, from their understanding of the pitch to the resulting team selections and how a losing captain must quickly regroup and devise a Plan B.

    Take the rightly criticised India series against South Africa. The BCCI should have been heavily penalised for such biased pitches. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean South Africa should have been given the choice to field first, they should have been given a wicket that is an Indian pitch but one that offers something for both bat and ball.

    As it always seems the case with cricket, it is not its history that is a concern, it is its future and the weak administrators of the game that threaten the sport the most.

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