Abolish the coin and hand the decision to the away side

Home boards prepare the surface and then get an even chance at using it first, which is not a balance anyone would design deliberately.

There is a version of this argument that gets dismissed as gimmickry, and there is a version that has already been tried in first-class cricket for years without the sky falling in. The second one is the interesting one. Let the visiting captain decide whether to bat or bowl, with no coin at all, and watch what it does to pitch preparation.

The logic runs backwards from the incentive. A home groundstaff prepares a surface knowing the home side's strengths, and the home captain then has a one-in-two chance of also getting first use of it. That is two advantages stacked, one earned by having a home ground and one handed over by chance. Remove the second and the calculation changes immediately: prepare something extreme and you are simply arming the opposition, because they will now choose the end of the deal that suits them.

The predicted result is not neutral pitches, which nobody wants either. It is pitches that are a bit less extreme in both directions, prepared by curators who know the visitor will read them accurately, and I think that is a better game than the one where a team lands, looks at a square that has been shaved to dust, and knows the match is over before the coin goes up.

The objection is tradition, and the toss is genuinely one of the sport's rituals. Two captains, a coin, a small piece of theatre for the cameras. I would keep the theatre and change the mechanism, because the ritual is worth about ninety seconds of television and the competitive distortion runs across a whole series.

The stronger objection is that in some conditions the choice is worth so much that giving it away for free overcorrects. In a day-night match where the ball moves under lights, the decision can be worth more than home advantage ever was, and handing it to the visitor unconditionally is a large gift. Fair. Restrict the change to matches where it matters most, or apply it only in the second half of a series after the home side has already used its first-use advantage once.

What I cannot accept is the current settlement, in which one side builds the stage and then tosses for it.