The predicament of captains at the toss

6. How important is the toss in the context of a game?

England v India: Specsavers 3rd Test - Day One

Toss is just not a formality. It is an important factor determining the outcome of a match. There are some matches where the mantra would be “ Win the toss and Win the Match”. Toss gives so much undue advantage to one team to surge ahead in the game before a ball is bowled.

Again, it is not that the simple. It is not safe to presume that the team winning the toss always ends up winning the match. It is the performance of the players to back up the decision of their captain, that will decide the fate of a match.

To conclude, the importance of a toss could be better explained by an incident.

It was the most famous match ever played on Indian soil. Like any other final, a lot depended on the outcome of the toss. However, in the background of the noisy crowd, the match referee could not hear what the visiting captain had called.

The visiting captain knew how important it was for his team to win the toss and bat first in a final. In the commotion leading up to the toss, the home team captain thought he had won the toss. But the visiting captain, fearing the worst, simply kept mum when asked what he had called.

Presuming the whole world didn’t hear if he had called head or tail. But the visiting captain himself should have definitely known what he had called. Keeping in mind the interest of his team, he was tight-lipped. This led to re-toss which the visiting captain genuinely won.

It was another story for another day to narrate that karma caught up with that visiting captain even before that night was out. Ironically, it was his opposite number, who was graceful enough to concur for the re-toss to happen, who finished off the match in style by depositing the last ball of the match into the Arabian sea.