Test cricket or T20 circus, the real 'Toss ka Boss' are not the captains, but referees and commentators
The increasing on-field goof-ups when the coin is flicked suggest that ICC, BCCI and IPL should demand better accountability from its personnel
Now that ace Gujarat all-rounder J.A. Shah has steered South Africa to title triumph in the World Test Championship---at least in the eyes of an 'IT Cell' video editor deputed to the International Cricket Council---it is a good time to ask: did anybody notice anything odd about the toss on day one?
Repeat: the toss on the opening day of the WTC Finals at Lord's, 11 June 2025?
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The two captains are on one side of a round ICC mat measuring about five or six feet in diameter. Beside them commentator Ravi Shastri demonstrating yet again that he no longer needs a mike to be heard anywhere in the cricket-playing world.
In the background, the teams are going through their pre-match drills.
The stands are still filling up.
Clearly, it is at least 10 or more minutes before the scheduled start of play. Maybe 30.
As South African skipper Temba Bavuma flicks the coin across the ICC mat, Pat Cummins calls "heads". The coin falls on the other side of the mat, about eight feet from its point of origin. Standing at that end is the ICC match referee Javagal Srinath, and with him a cameraperson or two.
Shastri: "Heads is the call. What's it, Javagal?"
Srinath: "Tails."
Shastri: "Temba, you've won the toss, what have you decided?"
Bavuma: "We'll have a bowl first."
End of toss, start of finals.
Neither the Australian captain nor the South African makes the slightest effort, like proceeding toward the coin, to ascertain on which side it fell. Nor does the TV broadcaster, which is using a drone camera and a hand-held camera for the toss, show how the coin landed.
Maybe the requirements of TV production do not allow for such courtesies any longer. The two captains have to chat with the on-field TV presenter immediately after the toss. Having them flit back and forth across the ICC mat to see the 'sikka' can mess up the visual aesthetics and eat into valuable advertising time.
Minus these exertions, therefore, the finals proceeds and goes on till J.A. Shah passed on Test cricket's 'sengol' to the Proteas who had worn the 'choker' tag for 27 years.
It is possible that Javagal Srinath, a brusque no-nonsense cricketer in his time, has built such a stainless reputation for trust and integrity over 774 matches as a referee in all formats that captains do not feel the need to doublecheck on his word of something as mundane as the toss.
And perhaps there can't be too much room for doubt in the minds of teams either. In the era of powerful, all-pervasive cameras which can zoom in on every grain of sand in a player's pocket, how much time would it take for the TV umpire to rectify a toss called wrong? Plus, there are other bystanders and stakeholders, too.
Still, it beggars belief that broadcasters who have five full days to show nearly every face at a ground in a Test match think it is unnecessary to show the face of a coin to the audience for a few seconds.
Why?
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In the travelling circus that is international cricket, where there is a new show somewhere or the other every day, sometimes multiple shows on the same day, the toss is probably the least tricky stunt for the ringmasters cracking the whip: ICC, the boards, the leagues, the broadcasters, the advertisers.
It is just a perfunctory way to get the animals and artistes on stage before the curtain goes up. (The appropriate Latin word for perfunctory is 'pro forma', i.e. for form's sake, which is why a move is afoot to get rid of the toss altogether, by always giving the visiting captain the right to choose whether to bat or bowl first.)
So, yes, nobody loses sweat over a toss, except some hack bloviating on Substack, except that it seems to be happening far too often for eyebrows not to be going up.
Just a week before the WTC finals, on 3 June 2025, it’s the finals of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad.
It's Royal Challengers Bangalore versus Punjab Kings, both eyeing the trophy for the first time in 18 years. It's a packed house and at the centre are, as always, the two captains, the match referee, and the TV presenter.
Here there is a variation on the theme. Shreyas Iyer wins the toss and elects to bowl first. The referee, Javagal Srinath as it happens, rushes off to his cubicle in the stadium, as he usually does, as if he has to catch the 6.15 Chamundi Express to Mysore.
The two captains now do the mandatory bullshit chat with the presenter, Ravi Shastri as it happens, again.
After they leave, Shastri repeats the outcome of the toss, but amazingly for someone who has commentated on the game for 30 years, gets it all mixed up. He says Punjab Kings have won the toss and elected to bat first.
Maybe it's just the big occasion.
Maybe it's relief that the charade will soon end.
Maybe anybody can have a "bad day at the office".
Whatever the cause for his momentary brain fade, Shastri instantly realises the goofup, corrects himself, and bowls right-handed to make the point. No damage done, or not much damage done. But it's one more dodgy toss in the dossier.
Scour the internet, and you will find many more instances of who’s the Toss ka Boss.
Shilpa Shetty doing a Ravi Shastri in some other IPL match. A referee picking up the coin far away from the captains and announcing the outcome. A referee picking up the coin even before the captains have had a chance to see how it landed.
Heck, there is even a Sholay-style video of a coin which has a head on both sides being used in an IPL match. Hopefully, it isn’t AI generated.
Obviously, it is unfair to cherry-pick on a couple of tosses in recent memory and jump to conclusions; there are hundreds of tosses which are glitch-free. Yes, but then so are hundreds of plane take offs; it's the one that doesn't that explodes in your notifications.
Obviously, also, it makes little sense to compare a Test match toss with an IPL toss. In a Test a toss can significantly impact the game, especially considering factors like weather, pitch conditions, and team strengths. In an IPL match, the toss mostly impacts those gambling on Dream 11.
Moreover, if captains and teams have no issue with tosses won and lost in the fog of noise, what could any “outsider” be? In the era of spread betting, in which punters bet on not just the outcome of a match but tiny slices of it, who will win or lose the toss is something very much an object of interest to bookies and gambling platforms.
Modesty prevents one from mentioning the rest.
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It might seem like a mountain is being made of a molehill. Maybe. But in his recent autobiography Wrist Assured, the batting legend Gundappa Vishwanath narrates an instructive incident that occurred when he first became captain of India.
It is India versus Pakistan, 29 January 1980.
It is the Eden Gardens in Calcutta.
It is way before the toss became an event.
Vishwanath writes:
“I walked out for the toss alongside my Pakistani counterpart Asif Iqbal. I desperately wanted to win the toss. The pitch looked good for batting, which added to my desperation even though I had no say in the matter. All I could do as the home captain was flip the coin, and hope Asif called wrong.
“With only a couple of press photographers clicking away—-this was long before match referees, even longer before the television commentator interviewed captains at the toss—I flicked the coin and Asif called.
“It landed in the middle of the hard pitch and started to roll away from us before coming to a halt. Asif got to the coin before I did, picked it up, turned to me, put his hand out and said, ‘You have won the toss, Vishy’.
“I hadn’t seen which way the coin had landed, but what reason did I have to doubt Asif?”
The 1980s were innocent times, or maybe they were not if you know what Sharjah came to represent under Asif Iqbal. But 45 years down the line, in circa 2025, when technology seeks to iron out every unpredictability in the game, only the naive would argue that the toss should be immune from it.
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One final story: in the days before mobile phones and internet, in the days when Indian cricketers didn’t play every day, the former sports editor of a national English newspaper says he would sometimes get a late-night phone call on the newsroom’s land line. An anonymous caller would have a special request.
Could the bowling order be slightly tweaked in the scorecard for next morning’s edition? Instead of showing A bowled the first over and B bowled the second over, could the scorecard please show that B opened the bowling and A followed? In those innocent days, it seemed like a harmless request.
Thereby hangs a story.
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