Eliminating toss from Test cricket: A statistical analysis
Voices have been rising to eliminate toss in Test cricket to maintain the popularity of the format by making it more even field for the touring teams. The idea was initialized by legendary Steve Waugh and many experts have so far voiced their opinions in favour of the proposal. The purpose is to negate the home advantage to a certain extent so that the abysmal records of touring sides which is getting worse year after year would get better.
Also, the importance of eliminating the toss arises due to the current scenario in international cricket, where only South Africa is the only team to have an overseas win-loss ratio more than 1 since 2005, with Australia (0.63) and India (0.50) being the only two other nations to have the ratio over 0.5. And the away win-loss records among the top-8 teams has been at an all-time low (0.37) in the current decade, as compared to 0.65 in the previous decade.
Now let us look at how the toss has affected the results over the years since the very beginning of Test cricket. (Tests played at neutral venues have not been taken into consideration)
1877-1900
1901-1950
1951-2000
2001-2010
2011-Present
As seen from the stats above, the difference in win percentage of home teams, as well as touring teams between winning and losing the toss, is quite significant in the current decade, much like the beginning phase of Test cricket. However, in the middle phase of cricket, including the first decade of the 21st century, the toss did not show significant differences in results, though even then the home side's win percentage is much higher than that of away side.
This shows that toss had a significant role in deciding the outcome of the match in the 19th century when cricket was in its infant stage, as well as in the current decade. If we ignore the initial period when not man teams played cricket, we can see a gradual increase in the impact and relevance of toss in deciding the winner.
Here is the stat for the last four years (2015 onwards)
In the last four years, the difference in win percentage of the away sides on winning and losing the toss has been an all-time high 14%, signalling the alarming need to make the longest format of the game more balanced and negate the home advantage to a large extent.