Ok, deliberately provocative thread title, but this is a thread about the coin toss.
I saw an article recently that said that of the last 13 tests in Asia with a non-Asian touring side, the Asian team has won the toss in all 13 games, and won 11 of them (the only exceptions being the washout between South Africa and India, and England's effort in Abu Dhabi). Similar issues happen in Australia (see the recent Australia/NZ series, where Australia won the toss in all three, and in the first two proceeded to bat NZ out of the game), and in England, where England has made a habit of winning the toss and bowling on moving wickets and taking out underprepared opposition before the pitch has flattened out (see the 2015 Ashes series, where Cook won four tosses in a row, Pakistan and Sri Lanka series).
Is there a case for trying to even the odds and reduce home pitch advantage by adopting the CC rules of giving the visiting side the decision of whether to bat or bowl? Or is that simply not suitable to a bilateral series of multiple games?
I did wonder if it might be worth doing an alternating series, so that whoever loses the toss in the first game of a bilateral series automatically gets to choose bat/bowl in the next game, and so on alternating throughout the series, but my concern is that if a groundsman knows that the home team is guaranteed to win a toss, especially in a vital game, it will encourage even more biased pitch preparation that is currently the case.
One idea that I do like very much, as it appeals to the mathematician and gamer in me, is bidding for the result you want. (I love modern boardgames!). Both captains would present to the umpire a sealed envelope in which they have written down whether they would prefer to bat or bowl first, and the number of runs they are willing to concede to the opposition in order to get that result. If one team wants to bat and the other field, no problem, both teams get what they want for no cost. But if both teams want to do the same thing, the team that bid more runs gets to do what they want, but they concede their bid in runs to the opposition. So for example, India and Pakistan both want to bat first. India bids 50 runs and Pakistan bids 40. India wins and bats first, but Pakistan starts its first innings at 50/0 rather than 0/0.
Statistically speaking, at some grounds the bat-first advantage is over 50 runs, so teams should be willing to bid a significant number of runs to get what they want:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/co ... 05001.html
Thoughts?