Sri Lanka’s recent 2-0 demolition of South Africa in their recent test series has again sparked debate into weather the time-honoured tradition of the toss of a coin to see who bats and fields at the start of a test match should be scrapped. Sri Lanka prepared two wickets in these test’s that spun lavishly from the first day and loaded their side with spinners to take advantage of these conditions, which played to their strengths as well as neutralising South Africa’s quicker bowlers.
This now builds a bit of history between the two sides of taking home advantage to the extreme and preparing pitch’s tailored made to their sides strength. When Sri Lanka toured South Africa last, the homes side captain Faf Du Plessis publicly announced that the pitch’s prepared would have lots of grass and pace in them to negate Sri Lanka’s best bowler Rangana Herath and load his side with pace bowlers to demolish the Sri Lankan batting line up with. The result of these home sides preparing such favourable home conditions has seen two totally one-sided encounters and a continuing trend of home sides across the world being totally dominant over the last couple of years.
With test cricket seemingly always under the microscope to provide more interest and entertainment in the format, a change could well be required to redress the balance in Test series. One such suggestion would be to scrap the toss of the coin at the start of the game and allow the away captain to select weather he would like to bat or bowl. This would more than likely see that the away side get the very best of extreme conditions with a South African pitch with plenty of grass and pace and bounce at its most lively at the beginning of a test match would almost certainly see the way side get first use of it with the bowl and potentially even out the contest. Conversely wickets in Asia are always best to bat on first with the pitch breaking up more and more as the game goes on, meaning that Sri Lanka or (any other Asian side) could well be a bit more wary of preparing such a dramatically helpful spinning wicket knowing with certainty that they will be getting the worse of the conditions by batting second and very likely last on a deteriorating pitch.
Every single Test match since the very first, between Australia and England at the MCG in March 1877, has begun with a toss of the coin to decide who should bat or bowl first. The home captain flips the coin and the visiting captain calls heads or tails. It may well be that for the future of the test format to continue this century’s old tradition mat need to change.
Click the link below it would be a pleasure to have you on board.
Leave a Reply