Former Australian Captain, Allan Border has come out and expressed the need for Test Cricket to be played without the toss giving the visiting team the opportunity to choose whether to bowl or bat fast, which will invariably enforce the home side to premeditatedly ensure good quality surfaces.
Border is worried about the excessive home advantage that teams are gaining against the away side all over the world and thinks scrapping the toss, even if on a trial basis, is the way to go.
The 2010s have been a historically bad decade to play Test cricket away from home, with touring sides suffering defeat 189 times and only winning 101 of the 369 Tests played since 2010*. That’s being a win-loss ratio of 0.535.
Border was quoted telling the foxsports.com.au as, “I’m in the camp for no toss and letting the visiting side decide, Traditionally it shouldn’t play such an important role in the game but it has become that way.
“I don’t think we need to fiddle around with Test cricket too much but it has become an issue because all visiting sides feel like they get stitched up by pitch preparation. Of course, the only way to do these things is to trial them first.”
Over the past three years away teams have won 57 Tests and lost 115 (W/L of 0.486). Those statistics improve drastically when the visiting side has won the toss – 23 wins to 28 losses (0.821)*. On the other hand, after losing the toss away teams have only won 16 matches and lost 52 (0.308).
In May the ICC cricket committee advised the ICC to retain the tradition, arguing “it was an integral part of Test cricket which forms part of the narrative of the game.” but current players and captains like Faf du Plessis believes otherwise.
Faf recently said, “I’m a big fan of taking away the toss, I think even in South Africa you’ll still prepare the conditions the way you prepare them now, but you just make sure that you bring some balance."
“In home conditions, teams will still win the majority of the games, but you still do even it out a little. I think over the last two or three years away-records have definitely gone down, and games are finishing a lot sooner than they used to.”
(Inputs from foxsports.com.au)
