Former India fast bowler Zaheer Khan recently had a fun banter on Twitter saying India winning three tosses in a row is quite a thing in recent times. Zaheer was referring to India-New Zealand T20I series where Rohit Sharma won three consecutive tosses. The team has suffered a lot of heartbreaks in recent times on account of losing the toss. They lost two crucial tosses against Pakistan and New Zealand and went on to lose the matches in the 20-20 World Cup. While they didn't play to their potential, bowling second on dewy conditions had a role to play as well.
Not always, but on quite a few occasions, toss can severely dent the chances of the team that loses the toss, as was the case in 20-20 World Cup. Recently, a cricket fan came up with a unique way to mitigate the unfair advantage the teams get after winning the toss.
Associate Professor Haris Aziz, a game theory expert from UNSW, laid out a a three-step method which he calls as Toss, Propose, and choose. The simple steps minimise the effects of losing the toss.
In the method, the skipper that lose the toss will get a chance to propose some tweaks. For example, if the pitch is flat and the team batting first will get the best of the conditions, he can propose that 100 runs will be deducted from the total score of the team batting first. After this, the winning skipper can take a call of batting or bowling first.
“The reason I think this method is quite fair is because it has a mathematic justification,” Professor Harris Aziz said on 3AW Drive.
