Addressing the home advantage in tests

When the English fast bowler Harold Larwood passed away in 1995, an articled had appeared about the bodyline series in the Marathi language newspaper called Maharashtra Times. It was a beautiful account published over multiple days, and read like a novel. The newspaper was published in Mumbai, and my town being ~400 kilometers south, would arrive at my home around 3pm. I couldn’t wait to get back home from school to read what happened next in the bodyline. Test cricket had hit me before adolescence did and I have been in love with it ever since.

Indian test cricket abroad used to be ordinary in those mid-90s. As I have grown up, so have Indian away performances, barring the torrid 2011-2012 season. But at 2-0 down with a greentop waiting at the Wanderers, the current South Africa tour seems very mid-90s. India have taken all possible 40 wickets, the basic need to win tests and can claim to have bettered most, if not all, previous touring parties. But if your best is likely to achieve this scoreline, it is disheartening. Looking at most series these days, not least the just concluded Ashes, it’s quite obvious that winning abroad consistently is a thing of the Aussies around the turn of the century or the Windies of the Babylon fame. South Africa have been consistent abroad, and Pakistan have had their flashes of brilliance. But these are all exceptions than norms. And there lies the biggest threat to tests. So instead of cribbing about it, I am going to suggest some tinkering that might give it an adrenaline shot. Buckle up folks.

1.  Addressing home advantage: Given how much overhead and soil conditions affect a test pitch, I don’t think we can get standardized set of people preparing all test pitches. Besides, we want to see pitches that have their traditional nature and offer home advantage. A foreign pitch expert may just destroy a test match if they don’t know how to prepare a pitch in certain conditions. However there is 1 thing that does affect the game and is easily adjustable as per the away team’s demands, the ball. How about we let the away team pick the balls for the test match? Indian and English bowlers complain that the kookaburra does nothing for them when they tour. How about India continuing its contract with SG, but rather than using it for the home tests, they get to use it for their away test matches? Australia could come to India and play with the Kookaburra. In short, the away team gets to choose the balls for the test match.

2.  Addressing toss advantage: Cricket might be the only sport where the team winning the toss gets a choice and the team losing the toss gets nothing. In many other sports, both teams get a choice (e.g. in tennis, the toss-winner chooses whether to serve or receive, or the side of the court to start from and the other player gets the other choice). Here are a few ideas to neutralize the toss advantage.
  a. If you are playing a multi-test series, you toss only in alternate games. If team A wins the toss in the 1^st game, team B automatically wins the toss for the 2^nd game. If there are odd number of games, the away team wins the toss in the last game.
  b. One team chooses whether to bat or ball and the other team can choose to make 1 change to their XI after the first innings of both teams. So if you were forced to bowl first on a batting paradise and fell behind because of that, you could use your substitution in the 2^nd innings. Note that this maintains the sanctity of the allrounder, unlike the dreaded super-sub rule from ODIs. You are still using the same XI for both batting and bowling in the 1^st innings. It’s just that you treat the 2^nd innings (of both teams) as a separate entity and can make 1 change to the XI. This advantage might be powerful enough that a captain winning the toss may choose to actually have this option, and may defer the bat first/bowl first decision to the other captain.
  c. One team chooses whether to bat or ball and the other team controls when to take the new ball. The new ball should become available in the 70^th over. And till the 90^thover, the captain who didn’t get to make the bat/bowl decision, gets to control when to take the new ball for both teams. After 90 overs, the bowling captain gets the choice, like today.   

3. Maximizing your XI: We could let teams name their XI after they know whether they are batting or bowling first, instead of before the toss. We could even allow both teams to change their XI after the first innings of both teams (like option 2b above) to get the best players performing for the conditions.

From that bodyline piece, I remember one particular episode. After missing the SCG test, in the first innings of the MCG test, Bradman tried to hit his way through the offside to counter the leg theory. But was clean bowled for a golden duck by Billy Bowes. He made amends with a century in the 2^nd innings and helped Australia level the series at 1-1. Immediately after the win, he took up the issue of bodyline bowling with Australian board, as he didn’t want to complain about it after a defeat and appear a sour loser. I started writing this piece after Newlands and have finished it after the Centurion debacle. The timing is unfortunate, and I am going to be labeled a disgruntled Indian fan for suggesting this on the back of yet another series loss away from home. I hope that Johannesburg turns it around for India. Or at least Sri Lanka puts one past Bangladesh at Chittagong in early Feb to raise the flag for the away teams.

Note: This was submitted as an entry to espncricinfo stands, and hence condensed to 1000 words.