Toss (cricket)

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In cricket, the toss is the flipping of a coin to determine which captain will have the right to choose whether their team will bat or field at the start of the match.

Before play begins, the captain of each side will inspect the pitch. Based on the pitch and weather conditions, the captains select their final eleven players. If the pitch is soft or dusty, the captain will tend to select more spin bowlers; if the pitch is hard, the choice tends to favor fast bowlers at the expense of spinners.

Half an hour before the start of play, the two captains convene and exchange team selection sheets. This lists the composition of each side, which cannot be changed for the duration of the match, other than in the case of a concussion substitute. Then, with the supervision of the umpires, a coin is tossed to determine which captain will have the right to choose whether to bat or field. The home team's captain tosses the coin while the visiting team's captain calls heads or tails. The decision by the winner off the toss as to whether to bat or bowl first is of great tactical importance, and the captain will have considered many variables before arriving at their decision. Because of the different natures of the games, it is considerably more common to choose to bat second in one-day cricket than it is in Test cricket due to batting conditions being difficult in 4th Innings.

In 2004, the International Cricket Council clarified the definition of when matches have deemed to commence and stated the toss is the official start of a match. Therefore a match abandoned at any time after the toss stands as a match played and enters statistical records. If a match is abandoned before the toss, it is not considered to have been played at all and does not count for records.^[1] The toss may be delayed, for example, due to bad weather.

The traditional method of the tossing of a coin in test match cricket has been practiced in the 141 years of Test cricket history from the inaugural test match in 1877.^{[citation needed]}