Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 29 November 2009 /

Kumar Sangakkara guessed wrong in Kanpur and Sri Lanka crumbled to an innings defeat. Andrew Hughes asks how crucial it is to win the toss in the five day game and looks ahead to Wednesday's Third Test

When India piled up 417 runs for the loss of two wickets on the first day at Kanpur, those of us who had sat through much of the previous match at Ahmedabad feared the worst. But thanks to the rehabilitated Sreesanth, the home side were able to knock the Sri Lankans over for 229 and grind their way to an enormous victory before tea on the fourth day. It was a welcome result and a fillip for a series that had threatened to put us all to sleep.

Nevertheless, didn't India gain a huge advantage by winning the toss and being able to bat first? Received wisdom is that guessing correctly which way the coin will fall is essential in India, since you need to bat first whilst the pitch is at its best. You can then amass a huge score before it starts to crumble and let your spinners do the rest. This belief explains why, out of twenty Tests played at Kanpur, the team winning the toss elected to bat first on nineteen occasions. It is a similar story at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai, venue for the deciding Third Test beginning on Wednesday.

So was Don Bradman right when he used to say that the captain's first job was to win the toss? Is calling 'heads' or 'tails' correctly really such a vital factor in determining the outcome of a Test match?

The answer appears to be no. The stats suggest that the advantage that comes with winning the toss is surprisingly small. Captains who guess correctly win on average between three and four per cent more matches than those who lose the toss. And there are virtually no Test match venues where winning the toss appears crucial to winning the game. No captain who guessed incorrectly has won a Test at the R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo, but only six such matches have been played there, so the sample size is too small to draw conclusions.

All of which suggests that the importance of winning the toss in Test matches, even in India, has been much exaggerated. The situation is different for one day games, where one team may have to face a large proportion of their overs in early morning dew or another bat their entire innings under lights. But in a five day game it is harder to predict how conditions will turn out, when precisely a pitch might deteriorate, by how much and for how long you might have to bat on it.

Still, captains are frequently held to account for making the 'wrong decision'. For a long time in the history of the game, there was no particularly dilemma for the captain who won the toss. The convention of choosing to bat first was rigidly adhered to. But these days, captains are under no such obligations and are free (or perhaps the word should be 'forced') to make their own assessment of conditions.

And, given a fifty-fifty choice you can make yourself look a prize turnip if you are seen to get it wrong. Just ask Nasser Hussain who chose to insert the Australians on a flat Brisbane wicket in 2002. Or Ricky Ponting who, deprived of his bowling talisman, Glenn McGrath just minutes before the toss, nevertheless chose to put England in at Edgbaston in 2005.

Ultimately though, Sri Lanka didn't lose the Second Test because Kumar Sangakkara lost the toss; they were simply outplayed. In particular, their three-spinner strategy was a failure and seems likely to be ditched ahead of the Third Test. The more cynical amongst you might suggest that, with a 1-0 series lead secured, the pitch at the Brabourne Stadium might turn out to be on the flat side.

But we shouldn't assume too much in that regard. This is, after all, a venue that has not hosted a five day game since 1973. We shouldn't assume either that the visitors will give up without a fight. This could be the last Test match that Muttiah Muralitheran plays in India and he will want to leave his mark. Sri Lanka are [5.1] to level the series, with the Indians on [2.56] and the draw at [2.36]

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