Hello and welcome to Stumped - your intercontinental hit of News, Features,
and debate from the quirky world of cricket. I'm Alison Mitchell, and I'm in Melbourne where I've
been commentating off tube - as the industry phase goes - on the first men's Ashes Test which is
taking place in Brisbane. But, border rules mean that the Channel 7 team who I'm working for - the TV
network - we can't get into Brisbane, so hence we're doing it from here. It has not stopped us
being thoroughly absorbed by a dramatic and highly entertaining and eventful opening few days of the
Ashes. The only sadness Jim, is that I'm not able to sit and commentate alongside you just yet.
Yes, Ali. Hopefully in Adelaide, we manage to sort out all these protocols of getting
from one state to another and you'll be joining us on the radio. I'm here in Sydney & like Ali,
calling it off tube from Brisbane. The weather looks lovely in Brisbane when the sun shines.
You get a suntan in the studios, I suppose. And suddenly the air-con's working very nicely, and
so is the Test match so far for Australia looks like they're on top. I think you could
say that confidently. Couldn't you Charu? Very one sided so far, Jim. Hello, everybody.
I'm Charu Sharma for All India Radio in Ahmedabad today where I am because of a charity golf
tournament that I'm assisting and thereafter, of course, I'm moving to Mumbai for an Indian Premier
Tennis League, so plenty of travel for me at this moment in time. But sad, of course, like Alison
said that not all together or even off tube to commentating on something or the other together
as a Stumped team. But it's wonderful to be here in Ahmedabad. There's some travel restrictions
that are beginning to surface but I'm glad that we're sort of almost normal in our part of the
world. And of course there's plenty of cricket news apart from the Ashes, what with the Indian
cricket captaincy in question once again: Rohit Sharma seems to have taken over all the white ball
captaincy as we did guess some time back. Yeah, that's right. I'm glad you have managed to
watch a little bit of the Ashes cricket, Charu, in and amongst all your other many activities.
Well, we have to start by talking about the men's Ashes and it's been a build-up unlike any other,
this particular series, but boy when it did get underway, the start was unlike any other that
we've seen in living memory. Rory Burns bowled around his legs by Michel Starc first ball
of the entire series! It was incredible, and that was after England captain Joe Root
had won the toss and opted to bat first. Jim, before we go any deeper, you were commentating
on that moment for the ABC, what did you feel? What did you think? What was your emotion and
the atmosphere in the Gabba when that happened? Well, it was a knockout! We're used to first over,
first ball incidents; remarkable deliveries: Harmison's wide, Michael Slater's cut off
DeFreitas some years ago that lashed the ball to the boundary, but this was just so emphatic.
Poor old Rory Burns - he didn't know what was going on as he staggered across his stumps and almost fell
over to the swinging yorker, brilliantly bowled by Michel Starc. Yes, the most dramatic start
you could imagine to a Test match, and something you very rarely see in a game of cricket.
I have to say I just was expecting Burns to follow it and clip it off his legs for four first
ball, but that wasn't the case. But, I tell you what, things didn't get too much better
for England because the wickets kept falling after that and England were rolled for 147 and
Pat Cummins taking a five-for on his captaincy debut. There has been controversy as well in the
first couple of days; first over the non-selection by England of both their veteran fast bowlers and
leading wicket takers, Stuart Broad and James Anderson; and then when it seemed that
David Warner had been bowled by Ben Stokes early on the second day, the delivery was checked and it
was shown to be a no-ball. That wasn't really the controversial part - the controversial part was
the fact that Stokes had bowled no-balls, multiple no-balls, in the lead up and yet they hadn't been
spotted. Later it turned out to have been a technology failure, the on-field umpire was
meant to be calling the no-balls and yet they weren't called. Warner went on to make 94;
Ollie Robinson grabbed two wickets in two balls, so we had an ashes hat-trick ball, and then Australia
lost four for 29 either side of tea on day two, but then when the Aussies work their way back into
a commanding position just when England threatened. Perhaps had a little chink of
being able to work their way back into the match, but Travis Head was incredible for a century in 85
balls and pushing that Australian lead up towards the 200 mark just as England's bowling attack
started to look depleted with injury. Charu, let's come to you - we've heard from Jim - just overall,
the Ashes are often eventful. There's been a lot going on in the first couple of days.
Well, yes. And one does feel a little sad is the word for England for starting out so badly,
but also the fact that the attack is depleted. It looks like it'd be one nil for Australia,
remember our call on Stumped was that Australia was probably 3-1 in the series. They started off
knowing that they're trying to prove us right. The lack of bowling options for England, of
course, are a big concern. And I hope these guys recover quickly enough. Also little disappointing,
maybe it's an early part of the Test, but Jack Leach wasn't too effective for England at all.
And that option hasn't also worked. But Head? What can I say, you know, he is in the mole,
at least in the knock that he played this time, which is a match winner perspective. If you
score slowly, there are times when you amass a lot of runs, but also give the opposition a chance
by scoring quickly which is just so vital in Test matches now, and he did very well,
Travis Head. However, I think England have a minor chance of coming back, but I
think Australia too far ahead now. And I feel for you, Alison because it was a very poor start.
I cannot remember an English team coming to Australia and not playing a match of any sort
before the first Test. And that showed. I mean, the first day Australia was flawless in the
field, they did not make a mistake and took every catch. The second day, England missed
a few chances. Crucially, the Rory Burns catch, and a few run out chances. It was like they were
throwing at a needle not a set of stumps on a couple of occasions. And that could have made
the difference, and the no ball you mentioned, of course. But there was no Stuart Broad. I mean,
this is madness. Absolute madness. And there should be a Royal Commission at the end of
this game as to why he wasn't picked, because that was a barmy, excuse me fellas, selection.
Let's hone in on that for a moment because we know with the England team for a start,
who takes responsibility for selection - it is the England coach,
Chris Silverwood. He is the selector. There's no national selector who sits outside of the team.
It is Chris Silverwood who chooses the XI, in conjunction of course with Joe Root, so it's their
call. There is nobody else to look at, so he will have those questions to answer. And we will get at
least the direct explanation from the England coach at the end of the match. Charu, could
you get your head around leaving out both of those players with more than 1100 wickets between them?
Well, I'm only presuming that there's some kind of niggle or injury because it cannot
possibly be on form or on reputation. And especially the first Test, because there's
so much psychology involved in the first Test. There's psychology involved in the entire Ashes,
and to not go with the spearheads in the very first Test match defies any kind of logic.
Now I wonder whether with Stuart Broad, given that he's coming back from a pretty serious calf
injury, that they genuinely doubted or didn't feel confident that he was match fit given,
as you say Jim, the lack of match practice. Do you think that that they also influenced Joe
Root's decision at the toss, given that they had decided to go with Woakes in the team?
I don't think it was a poor decision at the toss. It didn't work out for them as it turned out,
but it's hard to anticipate conditions and they decided, obviously, with Leach playing that
they're bowling last and the ball might be turning. I mean, I feel for Leach as well.
He's taken a thumping in this game, but he hasn't played any cricket. What has he played? Six first
class matches during the year? No wonder he's under done apart from all the others.
So things have worked out so far, wretchedly for England. You would hope that they can
recover. It was interesting to notice that this group of bowlers as a combination,
have never played together for England before. So first time, right? And it probably
wasn't the appropriate time at the beginning of an Ashes series to be leaving out both your star
bowlers. I'm still scratching my head, as I say, that neither of Anderson or Broad were playing.
You play your best XI to start a series, surely. Next on Stumped, during the recent men's T20
World Cup, there was a lot of talk about the coin toss and how most teams who won the toss ended up
winning the game. In fact 30 out of 45 matches - so that's about two thirds - were won by the team
who won the coin toss, including the final when Australia beat New Zealand. It was a point, Charu,
that you raised here on Stumped at the time. In the more umbrella sense, it was rather
disappointing to have teams chasing and win a lot more comfortably so you know just sort of
dampen the possibilities of the T20 World Cup, because we know it's close enough anyways like
you know you toss a coin. But by losing the toss and then having to bat first, it just seems to be,
you know I'm sure the teams are very disappointed at losing the toss. So I think that was a major
collective disappointment that the fact that was so overwhelmingly favouring teams that chased.
Well back in 2018, you might remember that the ICC Cricket Committee considered removing
the toss from the World Test Championship completely, but they decided instead to urge
member nations to produce better pitches. Now the County Championship in the UK went one step
further and between 2016 and 2019, they gave the visiting team the opportunity to scrap the
toss and simply choose to bowl first. That was an attempt to stop clubs preparing excessively
dampened, seam-friendly pitches and to encourage spin bowling as well. Four years later, though,
the England and Wales Cricket Board decided that that hadn't worked. But now a new suggestion could
transform the coin toss as we know it. Now Haris Aziz is an associate professor at the University
of New South Wales and joins us now to tell us a little bit more. Haris, welcome to Stumped.
You've incorporated cricket into your professional life now with this theory, so come on, tell us
what is this coin toss theory that you have? The proposal is called the Toss,
Propose and Choose method. We have the toss as usual. The second step is called Propose,
and in this particular step, the captain that loses the toss makes a proposal. In particular,
the captain prescribes a given number of bonus or handicap runs to neutralise the disadvantage
of bowling versus batting first. I can give you a simple example: Let's say that batting
first is a disadvantage. In that case, the team batting first will get a proposed number of runs
in the extras column. And finally, we have the third step, which is called Choose, where a choice
is made by the captain who actually won the toss whether to bat or bowl first, but with the caveat
that the team that takes the disadvantage option also gets the proposed bonus runs. Interesting.
This is clearly in an artifice that may or may not work, but perhaps he could tell us a little
bit more. The captain who loses the toss has an advantage, does he not? Doesn't that defeat
the purpose? Or is it all about alleged fairness in what you're coming up with?
Yes, so it really is all about fairness. The whole idea behind the method is to ensure that
no side feels that they are disadvantaged. So I agree with you that the method is designed to
help the captain that loses the toss. It does give that captain an opportunity to neutralise
the disadvantage. But if you note the order of the steps I explained, the final decision of
which option to choose is still with the captain that actually wins the toss. So in that sense,
the lucky captain is perfectly satisfied as well. Just how do you work out how many runs you're
giving the team batting first? It must depend on the location. It just sounds to me as though
it's going to make it much more complicated. I mean, Duckworth Lewis is complicated enough.
I agree. Some people might say why complicate a simple thing as a toss? You don't need this
method for low stakes games; a game in the park or a game in the backyard,
or the local club, although that can get pretty serious as well.
However, what you don't want is that the final of the ICC Test Championship, or the ODI World Cup
is heavily affected by the toss outcome. I'll add one more comment. Cricket, as you know,
has already been open to more complex methods such as Duckworth Lewis, so relatively speaking,
my method is a simple and minimal change. Well, Haris, we've touched upon this
and Jim mentioned this, but the subjectivity in the weightage that the
losing captain is given is a little perplexing for me, I mean, who is to decide that this pitch
if you bat first and is not good for you? The team that chases should be given - or the team
that bats first - should be given 10 runs more or five or 15? It sounds a little complicated,
but maybe you have an algorithm for it. However, I will ask that is this theory more effective in red
ball cricket - Test matches as much as cricket or are you recommending that happens across the board
in white ball cricket as well to neutralise the advantage or disadvantage of the toss?
Sure, I'll answer your second question first. Firstly, the method is designed for any kind
of format. It was inspired by the changes in conditions in T20's in Dubai, but as you know
the conditions and pitches change and even more in Test matches over the course of five days. So it's
certainly suitable for Test matches. And regarding a second, the question about how do you decide:
Cricket is a highly analytical game. Captain's make all sorts of decisions, so this is really
a decision which has to be made by the captain that loses the toss. So if the captain really
doesn't care about batting versus bowling first or is completely indifferent, then the captain can
simply resort to zero bonus runs, in which case we're back to the normal toss. It's only in certain
conditions where the captain feels that there is a certain advantage of batting versus bowling first.
That captain can do a thought experiment to see how many runs are reasonable. A simple
thought experiment would be: 'Would I bat or bowl first? Would I bat or bowl first if I had
five more runs, 10 more runs?' And at a certain point you would say: 'Okay, I think I'm roughly
indifferent among these two options,' and that would be a good indicator for the captain to me.
Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Haris Aziz from the University of
New South Wales. Thank you so much for joining us. Do you think it's a winner Jim,
Charu? Could you see something like that? Are we gonna keep the toss as it's always been forever?
I hope so. What you got to do is have the same conditions for the team batting second and first.
You play day night games you haven't, so just play all the games during the day. Simple.
Yeah, it's fascinating to think isn't it? What value do you put on 50 runs? What value do you
put on 15 runs as a head start? And that just feels so foreign, doesn't it, in cricket for
teams to have a head start? Yes, there is penalty runs as a concept but that is barely
ever actually put into place or actioned in cricket. So it feels very foreign to
offer a bargain although of course we know that declarations and targets and things like that get
often discussed behind the scenes. So is this sort of different to that even? I don't know. I'm not
sure from my perspective that it will catch on. There is, of course, there is already an alternate
to the coin toss isn't there, and it's called the bat flip. Though it's still a toss in a way.
They use it in the Big Bash. Well, that's all we've got time for here on Stumped on
All India Radio. Don't forget you can follow us on Twitter. We're @BBCWSSport and use #BBCStumped
and check us out on YouTube too. Go to BBC World Service on YouTube. So my thanks to Charu Sharma,
Jim Maxwell, and of course you all for listening. We'll see you next week. Bye for now.