SECOND TEST MATCH

Hokitika Guardian, 24 January 1921, Page 3

SECOND TEST MATCH

FACTORS IN THE RESULT

(By L. O. S. Poidevin in “Sydney .Morning Herald.”)

A groat deal of stress has been, and is still being, laid upon the influence of winning the toss upon the result of the second test match. There is a disposition both here and in England to arrive at the conclusion that losing the toss, as the weather turned out, necessarily directly lost the match for England, and with this assumption as a basis a suggestion lias been made for the regulation of the choice of innings in future test series. MISSED CHANCES.

In the first place, however, this assumption is hardly warranted. What ! ren'lly lost the match for the Englishmen, when all the circumstances are 1 taken into account, was not the loss of I the toss, nor the intervention of the j rain, hut their atrociously had slip j fielding. Tho Englishmen are not worrying in the least about tho loss of the toss in this mate’ll. As I tried to show previously in my comments on the play, the Englishmen had only themselves to blame that when the rain came it favoured our side rather than theirs. They are worrying tremendously about- the missing of those slip catches. Just look at the facts. To j mention only the most significant. Col- ' lins missed before he had scored ; Pcilew when he was three, and Gregory let off before lie was double figures-. Between them these men added 272 runs to the s ore-sheet after these letoff-. There were other less costly chances missed; but had these three reasonable opportunities been accepted, as nominally they should have been, then -at the close of play on Saturday England could scarcely have helped being at least upsides with us. In this •aso Australia would have had the had wicket to bat on, and England the final innings on a comparatively good one. That is an advantage I do not think we can concede this English team and still hope to win. That is, no doubt, what the Englishmen think when they blame not the loss of the toss nor the rain, but their own mistakes in the field, and themselves entirely for losing the match. It must he borne in mind, however, that they frittered away their opportunites before the rain came, and on the play up to that stage Australia had certainly won a decided advantage.

THE TwSS FOR INNINGS. The general question in regard to tossing for choice of innings is no new one. It lias often been threshed out before. Matches have been lost and won many a time by a captain’s guess of the coin, aided by the weather. It is no new suggestion, that attributed the first and fifth of the series a»d tnkto Mr J. W. Trumblo, viz., tossing for the first and fifth of the series and taking the choice of first innings for the others in turn. Many other suggestions. too, ha.ve been made in the past with the object of altering the simple cricket rule—part of the first in the laws of the game—“the choice of innings shall he decided by tossing,” because it has always seemed a great p tv that in cricket matches winning the toss should he so all-important- Tt is not so in other games. In lawn tennis, for example, you have an alternative — choice of service or choice ol court. It you take the service your opponnt chooses his court, and very little is gained either way. Tossing, however, seems to he associated with every ball game, though it is, alter all, il you come to think of it, a very one-sided ar- ' rangement. Only one person has a say in the matter. 1 toss the coin, you •“call; you either win or lose. I am passive in the whole business. It is incorrect for mo to say that) 1 have lost the toss. I never had a say in the result at all. The chances are not even with certain coins, because it is a well known fact that, given the chance to roll, they will invariably fall and settle heavy side down. Thus the man who “calls” has the advantage.

1 1 have known some captains win the toss with surprising regularity. They always, if possible, do two things, ask to see the coin and lot the other fellow loss. Perhaps one ought to mention that Douglas had the “call” in both the first and second Test matches. Tn Melbourne the coin Armstrong tossed was, [ believe, a new half-crown., Douglas called “heads,” the reccognised incorrect call for such a coin. He lost. Some captains—“ Joel” Darling, for instance, and “Archie” MacLaren, too hud no system for calling. They just trusted to the inspiration of the moment when the coin was in the air.