Thursday 20 August 2009

Change the Rules! (No.3) - cricket

England have just won the toss for the final Ashes test, meaning that they have had this honour four out of five times in the series. This is completely ludicrous. Wining the coin toss and being able to decide whether to bat or bowl first is an obvious advantage in cricket. So it’s common sense that, in any series, it should be divided equally between the two teams. A coin should be tossed before the first test, and then for the remainder of the series the two captains should take alternate turns in deciding whether to bat or bowl first (obviously, in a five test series, it would have to be split 3-2). Allowing one team to have this advantage in four out of five tests (with the possibility of having it in all five) is ridiculous – the equivalent of allowing a chess player to have the white pieces more often than their opponent in a multi-game match. It simply isn’t cricket.