Give the visiting captain the choice and put the coin away

A ritual that hands one side a measurable advantage on some surfaces survives only because it is old and looks good on camera.

The coin is charming. It is also, in certain conditions, a lottery for a quarter of the match result, and we have accepted that for a century because cricket loves a ceremony more than it loves a fair start.

The proposal is simple and it is not mine. Abolish the toss in matches played at a home venue and give the visiting captain the choice of batting or bowling. It has been trialled in domestic first-class cricket in more than one country, and the effect is worth thinking about even if you hate it. A home board that knows the tourists can simply choose to bowl first has much less reason to prepare a surface that does something violent for two sessions and then flattens out. The incentive shifts towards a pitch that is good for four or five days, because that is the only kind that cannot be exploited by the other side's choice.

The obvious objection is that it punishes the home team twice, since they already have to prepare the surface and now they lose the choice as well. I would answer that the home side keeps the enormous advantages of familiarity, crowd, no travel, and a squad selected with the venue in mind. Losing the coin is a small correction against a large pile.

The second objection is better. In some conditions, particularly under lights with dew, the choice is so valuable that handing it over decides the match before anyone walks out. That is exactly why the change belongs in the longer format, where the choice is meaningful but not decisive, rather than in a night limited-overs game where it plainly would be.

There is also a practical benefit that gets ignored. The choice would have to be declared at a fixed hour before play, which means the visiting captain commits in public and can be judged on it, and a decision somebody owns is more interesting than a coin nobody does.

What I cannot defend is the current position, where a captain calls in the air and then explains for ten minutes why the result was decided by something he had no control over.

If the toss really does not matter much, as broadcasters insist every week, then nobody should mind losing it.