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Post by flashblade on May 19, 2016 9:52:12 GMT
Here's my novel idea. The two captains walk out to the middle of the square. The home captain tosses a coin. The away captain calls 'heads' or 'tails'. If the away captain is right, he chooses whether to bat or bowl. If the away captain is wrong, the home captain chooses whether to bat or bowl. But then the result of the toss can have a massive influence on the game - too great an influence IMO. I don't think we should get stuck in the mindset of "we've always done it this way" |
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Post by hhsussex on May 26, 2016 6:31:26 GMT
This last round of games has completely confounded everything that has gone before in this season. There were 8 matches, 2 home wins, 3 away wins and 3 draws and none of those were of the two massive 1st innings and a dribble of a 3rd innings variety. What's more 4 of the 1st innings scores were under 300 and only one over 400.
Focusing on the tosss award matches 3 out of 4 produced results. Worcester and Durham prospered by putting their opponents owed a lot to their small first innings lead over Notts, and although the Napier-Porter-Masters machine was running smoothly when Essex put Glamorgan in, they were confounded by the resistance of Glamorgan, particularly Bragg in their second dig.
It isn't surprising then that most commentators found this round produced the best cricket of the championship so far, and even produced a hint of 3rd and 4th day pitch deterioration bringing the bowlers back into the match. Perhaps it is because the warmth has finally reached the subsoil and the grass is growing naturally in airier, looser than the early season wickets where the over-perfect batting wickets were the result of heavy rolling on ground that still carried a lot of the winter's moisture? It would be interesting to get a groundsman's view of this, and if this is true generally, then Andy Mackay's pitch at Hove this week could be a really excellent cricket wicket, offering something for everyone. Let's hope it is and that we can move forward nationally to feweer of these over-portected batsmen's strips.
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Post by hhsussex on Jul 17, 2016 6:15:58 GMT
Past the midway point in the season and how is the experiment going? Still a huge amount of draws compared with last year, some because of bad weather, but undoubtedly some because of the stultifying pitches prepared in response to this legislation. In 84 games the average first innings of the match score is 345. 52 of these have passed 300, 26 of which are over 400, including 6 500+ scores. In 52 games out of the 84 the captains have elected to toss of a coin in the traditional way, and these matches have produced the highest likelihood of a positive result, and have tended to favour the home side winning. There is almost no difference in the average score of these matches.  As for the other key objective, to encourage the development of spinners by shifting the focus from pitches prepared to give advantage to mostly medium-pace seamers, there are 5 spinners in the first 50 in the averages, the highest of them at No 20. They are Rayner, Patel of Warwickshire, Leach of Somerset, Kerrigan and Ansari.
Apart from the fact these all play for first division sides - and the original proposal was designed to address perceived problems in the second division - there is no strong evidence to suggest that their performance has been in any way enhanced by this legislation:
Where Middlesex is the home side they have been put in once in 5 games and that game was drawn. Only one match has produced a result - home win.
Warwickshire have had 4 home games, the only one producing a result was against Durham who took the toss award and won
Somerset's 4 home games have produced 2 draws, one of which included a toss award, one home win (conventional toss) and one loss to a side who claimed the toss award (Middlesex)
Lancashire won 3 out of 4 where the toss took place. The other game, against Warwickshire, was drawn.
In all 6 Surrey home games the toss has taken place. They have beaten Notts, lost to Warwickshire and drawn the remaining 4.
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Post by fraudster on Jul 17, 2016 21:43:25 GMT
Lose it, it's ruining the four day game.
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Post by jonboy on Jul 19, 2016 21:45:31 GMT
Lose it, it's ruining the four day game. We could file most our four day games in this thread, in fact pretty much all our games |
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Post by fraudster on Aug 6, 2016 8:17:55 GMT
On the evidence of this season, or ours at least, they might flip the toss rule around rather than lose it completely. The away side is offered the chance to bat, or go to the toss. Then we can just keep flipping it round every season, going from one extreme to another.
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Post by flashblade on Aug 6, 2016 8:45:03 GMT
Why not just give the away side the choice of batting or bowling, with no toss. That should concentrate the minds of the home groundsmen.
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Tosswatch
Aug 6, 2016 11:03:52 GMT
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Post by philh on Aug 6, 2016 11:03:52 GMT
Why not just give the away side the choice of batting or bowling, with no toss. That should concentrate the minds of the home groundsmen. How about just tossing a coin and the captain winning the toss deciding whether to bat or bowl |
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Post by flashblade on Aug 6, 2016 11:07:44 GMT
Why not just give the away side the choice of batting or bowling, with no toss. That should concentrate the minds of the home groundsmen. How about just tossing a coin and the captain winning the toss deciding whether to bat or bowl I think that's been tried before. The problem was that the winner of the toss often secured a match winning advantage, purely on the toss of a coin! There was too much at stake on the result of the coin toss. |
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Post by fraudster on Aug 7, 2016 15:28:01 GMT
Ultimately the aim is to produce the fairest wicket to play on ain't it. They can talk about spinners but really it's about the toss not having such a monumental effect on the outcome which as Flash says, it quite often did.
With that in mind, take the toss away and give the choice completely to the away side, as Flash says - you are clever Flash. If that doesn't ensure that the gardeners produce the fairest pitch nothing will, other than maybe a gun.
It's that or go back to the toss. We cannot keep what we've trialled this season, this is the worst of the four options because of all the featherbeds, draws and bore fests. Third worst, flipping it so they can choose to bat, second worst, a toss, best, Flash's no toss extravaganza. It's settled, you win Flash.
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