the art of coin tampering

So Omar discovered a website called Howstat which has the most detailed cricket stats I've ever seen. So I decided to do a completely inane analysis on the luckiest captains, by number of tosses won. Obviously I found nothing mindblowing, seeing as I was studying the frequency of a coin coming up heads or tails. But here are the results anyway.


ODIs (captains that have captained 20+ matches):
Each team has won between 46.7% (WI) and 53.6% (Ind) of it's tosses. Except Sri Lanka, which has won the toss only 30.7% of the time. This is mainly due to Arjuna Ranatunga's reign as captain, in which he captained the side a mammoth 193 times, while winning a meagre 10 tosses(5.2%). Surprisingly, he still managed to win 51% of his matches. Other unlucky captains are Carl Hooper of WI (34.7%) and Aamir Sohail of Pak (31.8%).

The luckiest captains have been Jimmy Adams of WI (69.2%), Ramiz Raja of Pak (68.2%). Interestingly enough, both have lost over 54% of their matches.


Tests (captains that have captained 10+ matches):
Again, no surprises. Each team has won between 46.7% (Pak) and 54.9% (SL) of their tosses. Ranatunga has fared better in tests, winning 51.8% of his tosses in 56 matches.

Luckiest captains are Arthur Hassett of Aus, Robert Wyatt of Eng, and Hubert Deane of SA, all of whom have won 75% of their tosses. All also lost less than 35% of their tests. Incidentally, all played before 1955, when cricket was cleaner and happier. And coins, apparently, were nicer. The only post-1975 captain to win over 70% of his tosses is Shivnarine Chanderpaul of WI (71.4%). Unfortunately, he has also lost 71.4% of his tests.

Unluckiest captains are Frederick Brown of Eng (20.0%), Glenn Turner of NZ (20.0%), and Bevan Congdon, also of NZ (23.5%). All have lost over 40% of their matches.

It is important to note that although many captains have very low toss-win ratios, Pakistan have never had a captain who won less than 32% (Akram) of his test tosses. Lanka and the Windies have fared even better, their unluckiest captains winning 45.5% and 41.7% of the time, respectively. Surely there is foul play at work. Perhaps it's time for the ICC forensics team...

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