Who gives a toss? It is time to eliminate the lottery of the coin flip

Jonhenry Wilson 20 Oct 2025

The toss has too much say on Test cricket results.

South Africa is in the middle of a Test cricket series against Pakistan, in Pakistan. As valiantly as they fought in the opening game of the two-match encounter, they were ultimately beaten in the first Test, going down by 93 runs.

From the moment that Aiden Markram lost the toss, the Proteas were always on the back foot on a wicket which provided huge assistance to the spinners.

By the fourth day, not only was it offering huge turn, but the ball had also started to reverse swing, which made survival almost impossible.

There were no complaints from South Africa about the way the game panned out, but you can’t help but feel that if Markram had won the toss the result may well have been reversed.

When pitches, like the one in Lahore, are prepared, the outcome of the game is often decided by the toss, and as quaint as the idea of the toss is, surely there are better ways of doing things?

The Proteas have already said they know what to expect in Rawalpindi – it will be another turner that’s expected to offer plenty to players like Noman Ali and Sajid Khan.

The fact that they know is why the Proteas, included an unprecedented three frontline spinners in the team for the first Test, with Senuran Muthusamy being the pick of the South African attack.

Also read: The 7 best openers ever to play for England in The Ashes – who’s No.1?

Possible next steps

Both sides go into the Test knowing that the wicket will turn prodigiously. For the away side, there is nothing they can do about it, except plan as carefully as possible.

For the home side, they hope that the aggressively turning wicket doesn’t come back to bite them as was the case in their previous home series, against the West Indies, at the start of the year.

In that series, just like in the current one against South Africa, the home side produced crazy turners.

Pakistan won the toss in the opening game, duly elected to bat, knowing that by the fourth innings batting would be close to impossible. They went on to win a low-scoring game by 127 runs.

The West Indies won the toss in the second game and, not surprisingly they chose to bat first. Again, not surprisingly, they went on to win a low-scoring Test by 120 runs.

South Africa will naturally be hoping for a similar turn of events for the second Test, which starts on Monday (IE: that they win the toss this time).

But let’s take it right back to the toss and ask the question if it isn’t perhaps something that should be done away with. Quite simply, it shouldn’t be possible for games, or even series to be decided by the flip of a coin.

Games should be decided by the players and the side that plays the best cricket should ultimately win the game.

Where to from here?

So, how about reworking the system a little such that in bilateral series, the away team will automatically be deemed to have won the toss in the opening game of a series. Or better yet, they will have first rights to claiming the toss.

If they choose to claim the toss, the home side will automatically get to claim it in the next game, and they will continue to alternate from there. If they don’t claim the toss in the first game, then the home side will be deemed to have won it.

The away captain only decides if he will claim the toss on the morning of the first game, so the home side can’t prepare a flat track and hold out for the brutal one in game two.

Such a system would encourage teams to produce competitive wickets that offer fair contests between bat and ball. While the option will always be there for the home side to produce a wicket that plays to their strengths, removing the coin toss at the start of a game would go some way towards ensuring it isn’t a complete lottery.

Time will tell quickly

You have to ask the question: If Pakistan knew that they would be bowling first in the first Test, would they have produced the pitch they did? It seems unlikely that they would have.

If they did, Aiden Markram would undoubtedly have looked to bat had he been given the right to ‘claim the toss’.

If the pitch looked like it would offer a more balanced contest between bat and ball he may have let the home side claim the toss to ensure that he got to claim it for the second Test.

How ever you look at it, in a cricketing world where very little is left to chance (think about things like DRS and player analytics etc), it seems crazy that something as random as a coin toss can have such a huge bearing on the outcome of a game or a series.

You can’t directly force the home side to change the wickets they prepare, but you can certainly encourage behaviour by changing the rules of the toss – especially in Test cricket where the changing pitch is so critical to how the game unfolds.