This story is pretty big news but it’s flying under the radar somewhat. The ECB have just announced that visiting captains will be able to decide whether to bowl first in the county championship next year. The toss will therefore lose much of its importance. It will only be significant if both teams want to bat.
This is what’s going to happen moving forward: the two skippers will walk to the middle, discuss interest rates and the latest crisis in the Middle East, after which the visiting captain will be asked whether he wants to bowl first. If the away team declines the opportunity, then the toss will take place as normal.
This seems like a good idea to me. It will discourage home teams from producing wickets that transform the likes of Darren Stevens into Terry Alderman. If pitches are dryer, and better for batting, then spin bowlers will have more opportunity to bowl long spells and take wickets too.
Considering the paucity of quality spinners in English domestic cricket, and the inability of our batsmen to play spin very well, this has to be a good thing. It’s too easy at the moment for mediocre teams to prepare green tops that favour their mediocre seamers.
Better pitches, as long as they’re not absolute featherbeds, should encourage counties to develop not only spinners but bowlers with genuine pace too. This should help the test team in several ways. For starters it will force seamers to improve their skills and their accuracy rather then simply ‘using the facilities’. If the pitches are dryer, it should encourage reverse swing too.
Although this move might cause a few problems at grounds with new drainage systems, which tend to be quite dry anyway, I think it’s definitely worth a shot. If it’s a success, I’d like to see it trialled at international level too.
Even though the toss has been a fundamental part of cricket for three hundred years – and I don’t like stamping all over tradition – home teams have been winning too many test matches of late. It’s getting ridiculous. Just look at Australia: absolutely terrible away from home but an unstoppable juggernaut in their own backyard. What’s more, India are exposing South Africa’s lack of quality spinners as we speak. It’s all too predictable these days.
I’d be tempted to go one step further and abolish the toss altogether. Why not let visiting test captains choose whether to bowl or bat? This would encourage groundsmen to prepare pitches that favour all kinds of bowlers. This should help to level the playing field.
Another positive is that we might see better test wickets all round. I don’t mean ‘better’ for batting; I mean ‘better’ in the sense that there’s a fair contest between bat and ball. This should create more entertainment and fewer snooze-fests.
I suspect this might do more to help test cricket than playing under lights or using pink balls. Talking of which, what did you make of today’s play in Adelaide?
James Morgan
First off, I think it’s a great idea to try experiments like this. (And like the pink ball.)
We only move forward and improve if we try a few things.
Second, interesting regarding India. If you have the spinners and you prepare a real turner, the toss may matter less than on a real seamer, because it doesn’t get much easier, or harder to bat against the spin during the first 3 or 4 days. Whereas often a greentop is a real “bowl Day 1” pitch.
Of course, it’s not an even contest between bat and ball – and that’s a serious issue the ICC need to think about.
Third, I’m glad you mention Australia, I’m pretty tired of hearing descriptions of a “fair pitch” that happen to match up to Brisbane. I don’t actually see why batsmen should be given pitches with no lateral movement. There needs to be a balance.
Totally agree the toss should be abolished and the visiting captain should get the choice. The toss has been way too influential in recent years. No way we’d have won the Ashes this summer if that had been the case.
Right end (encouraging spinners, discouraging dibbley-dobbley medium pacers) but wrong means in my view.
Pitches are the root of the problem. I’d prefer to see centrally contracted groundsmen and rigorous pitch inspections (what happened to them? has any county lost points for a poor CC pitch since 2011?). It isn’t all pitches though. Swann recently (in the DM) blamed English coaching of spin. It’s quite revealing that England’s best last three spinners (Panesar, Swann, Ali) came from ‘outside’ the system. Lastly, there are attitudes. Warne endlessly points out that pitches that help seamers usually help spinners too – but some county captains given a damp pitch would bowl their seamers into the ground before giving a spinner a go.
It reeks of an attempted quick fix. If they must do this, why not pilot it in D2 as originally planned?
Agree with Simon – right intentions, wrong way of going about it. All for preparing better pitches which encourage spinners and stop making medium-pace trundlers look like world beaters – but giving the visiting captain the opportunity to bowl first on a seaming pitch isn’t going to do this. They may have an attack equally suited to the pitch as the home side and be perfectly happy to field 4 seamers, so the spinner still doesn’t get a bowl. No guarantees the pitch will get any better either, so bowling first might not be to their advantage.
Better pitch inspections and stricter penalties is the way forward. The Board used to be quite happy to dock counties 25 points for a dodgy pitch – I remember it costing Essex the title one year.
But surely the groundsman won’t prepare a green top if there’s a good chance the home team is going to be inserted? Above all this move simply ensures the groundsmen do all they can to avoid creating a seamer’s paradise. They might be tempted to prepare something that helps the seamers throughout the entire match, but at least it will be a fair contest – even if, in some circumstances, spinners still won’t play much part. I think though, that the home side will be more inclined to at least include a spinner in the XI if there’s a better chance they’ll be bowling last.
If the home team think their seam attack is better, won’t they prepare even more of a seaming pitch that will keep moving throughout the entire match rather than just on the first morning?
If it’s going to help the seamers, it’s bound to help them more on the first morning than at other stage of the match. There might be the odd surface that’s slow to begin with, and then speeds up a little as it dries out (thus helping the seamers a bit more) but these surfaces are usually pretty good for batting too. If the ball starts travelling through to the keeper better, it usually comes on to the bat quicker.
Of course, a little extra pace and bounce can help spinners too. What definitely doesn’t help spinners is a damp green top.
I’m a bit confused here. Doesn’t the means already exist to fine counties or even dock them points for sub-standard pitches? As a first option we should try enforcing the rules that we already have.
Similarly for touring teams, the way to address the modern bias to home teams is to arrange proper warm up games, and enough of them, rather than signing off on a 2 day 13 a side pub game.
I’m not against some experimentation, but instinctively I don’t like messing with the fabric of the game to fix problems where the solutions are more obvious. Feels a bit like buying a new car when all you need to do is give your existing one a paint job.
As long as they don’t introduce such revolution in Overseas tests….
Umpire : So Alastair, you’re the visiting captain, do you want to bowl?
A Cook : No! Thanks but certainly not.
Umpire : Right we’ll toss.
Alastair, you’ve won the toss, what do you want to do?
A Cook : We’ll have a bowl.
Only kidding! Eighteen months ago maybe, not anymore.
I’d be interested to know what county captains think. Can anyone who still reads the papers tell me if our eminent journos have picked up on this?
Talking of innovation any opinions here about the day night tests?
First night drew an average audience in Aus of 1.5 million on a Friday evening peaking at 1.8. You wonder how many were watching at the pub. Certainly watching the fairly tight conclusion on Sunday evening at 9:30pm was a great start. Rating figures for that aren’t in yet.
Oh some other points the day night test was the top rating item on Friday/Saturday other than a half hour news broadcast on free to air.
In 16-39 age group it was the top rating program, so its not just a bunch of old fogies watching the cricket. The old people were watching the news.
So the TV figures for the final session of the Day night test.5th highest rating program of the year. Peak audience of 3.19 million. Average Audience 2.3 million.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/11/30/day-night-test-gets-bumper-tv-ratings
At least in Australia there is a market or cricket on Terrestrial TV (Or free to air as we call it).
Cheers Steve. Those are very interesting stats indeed. Did you see that 5 million watched the Davis Cup tennis yesterday? Only a few hundred thousand watched the Ashes in the UK.