Stats: Winning the Toss and Batting First Propensities

Should Test cricket do away with the coin toss?

Recently, there has been a debate in the cricketing circles to eliminate the toss from test cricket. Some proponents of the theory suggest that rather than spinning the coin the guest team should be given the choice whether to bat first or bowl. They say in this way the advantage of the home side while preparing the pitch shall lessen.

In the previous Bangalore test between South Africa and India, Virat Kohli after winning the toss opted to field first. It was after 41 years that a captain winning the toss at Bangalore has decided not to bat first.

During the Delhi test, it was found out that no team has ever opted to bat second after winning the toss at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium Delhi. It is indeed an apparent rarity that despite hosting 33 Test matches Delhi stadium has not seen a team that batted second after winning the toss.

So, we decided to dig some numbers to find out how many teams actually are afraid of batting second and are more keen to put on some runs on the scorecard for the other team to chase them eventually in the fourth innings of a test.

It is no hidden fact that chasing a total in the fourth inning is indeed a very difficult task. But the numbers we came across suggest that the international cricketers are equally, if not more, eager to bat first after winning the toss when compared to the street boys.

We also went some steps further to find out which stadiums and countries have the highest win toss-bat first percentage. The research came up with some interesting points. Let us first see how batting first tendencies are across different formats of international cricket.

Tests have the highest percentage (by a margin of 20 percent) of teams batting first after winning the toss while in limited overs format the decision is almost fifty-fifty with balance slightly tilting in favour of batting first.

W/L Ratio for teams winning the toss and batting first is above 1 for Tests, T20Is and also overall matches, but lower than 1 for ODIs.

Format	Matches Played	Toss Won- Batted First	Percentage	Won	Lost	Tie	Drawn/NR	W/L Ratio
All International Matches	6376	3763	59.02	1584	1553	26	599	1.019
Tests	2191	1597	72.89	555	496	2	543	1.118
ODIs	3712	1916	51.62	901	941	19	55	0.957
T20Is	473	250	52.85	128	116	5	1	1.103

Now we will focus only on Test Matches.

Win-Toss Bat First Team by Team Comparison (Tests)

When we ran our fingers across the record books, we found out that England is the team most likely to bat first after winning the toss. At an overwhelming 80+ percentage, England has batted first 4 times out 5 when they won the toss, and fielded first only once.

Australia and India have a percentage of 80 and 77 respectively and are on number 2 and 3.

Excluding Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, New Zealand is the least successful team after winning the toss and batting first with a win-loss ratio of just 0.355 in such matches.

Among top 8 Nations, 6 have a win-loss ratio in excess of 1 when playing first after winning the toss – which means they win the test game more often than not when batting first after winning the toss.

Only West Indies and New Zealand (among top 8 nations) have a W/L ratio lower than 1.

The percentage has not dropped below 60 for any team. New Zealand has the lowest percentage at 60.59.

The table is presented below for further analysis.

Team	Matches Played	Won Toss	Won Toss- Batted First	Percentage Batting First	Won	Lost	Tied	Drawn	W/L Ratio
England	965	465	374	80.43	143	90	0	141	1.588
Australia	783	397	317	79.85	156	81	1	79	1.925
India	495	250	193	77.20	56	51	0	85	1.098
South Africa	396	189	144	76.19	53	51	0	40	1.039
Pakistan	395	188	127	67.55	35	32	0	60	1.093
Zimbabwe	97	56	37	66.07	3	25	0	9	0.12
West Indies	510	262	170	64.89	55	61	1	53	0.901
Bangladesh	93	48	30	62.50	4	21	0	5	0.19
Sri Lanka	243	133	82	61.65	29	25	0	28	1.16
New Zealand	404	203	123	60.59	21	59	0	43	0.355